-The Hindu * How is the National Population Register compiled? How is it related to citizenship and the decennial census? And, can States refuse cooperation with the NPR process? The story so far: As protests spread all across the country against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019 and the proposed National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), West Bengal and Kerala suspended work related to the preparation and update of the National Population...

-The Hindu The provisions that empower the government to carry out such an exercise smack of arbitrariness On November 20, 2019 the Union Home Minister, Mr. Amit Shah, answered a starred question in the Rajya Sabha thus: “Preparation of National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC) is governed by the provisions of Section 14A of The Citizenship Act, 1955 and The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules 2003....

-Business Standard Petition claims private parties outsourced to collect citizens' data can misuse massive personal information in their hands The Supreme Court asked the Centre on Monday to state within two weeks its stand on the unique identification (UID) project, Aadhaar. A Bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu was hearing a new public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the project. According to the petition moved by Mathew Thomas, private parties who have...

-The Hindu     The UPA government's response to questions on Aadhaar's voluntariness continues to be marked by ‘intentional ambiguity.' Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool "This debate is ... about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word," i.e. "the Government now seek to persuade us that ‘voluntary' actually means ‘compulsory'." That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdom's House of Commons...

-The Telegraph Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ambitious plan to replace the leak-prone subsidy regime with direct cash transfers to bank accounts of beneficiaries may get delayed in Bengal because of tardy progress of biometric enrolment of residents in the National Population Register (NPR). Data available with the state’s directorate of census operations, which is overseeing NPR biometric enrolment, show that only 18.8 per cent of the population has been covered under the...