The central government has clarified their stance about the all-India National Register for Citizens (NRC), National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC), as per the Citizenship Rules, 2003.
No Indian citizen will face inconvenience after the final NRIC, Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said on Thursday.
He said: “NRIC is not going to be implemented soon but in due time. The misinformation of deporting all Muslims is misleading.
“Hence, we put out an advertisement in prominent dailies to clear the confusion that NRC exercise is yet to be formally announced. The final NRIC's rules and regulations will be framed in a manner so that no Indian citizens get ruled out."
Reddy made the clarification following Mamata Banerjee and Naveen Patnaik's rejection to exercise NRC in their states, West Bengal and Odisha, respectively.
Earlier, the West Bengal government put National Population Register (NPR) exercise on hold in 2011 and 2015.
However, the central government officials said government employees must not try to stop the act, and it would be wise for the states to participate and assist in the implementation of it.
While talking about the delayed procedure, one of the government officials said: “It may become difficult to do Census or NPR if state government employees and the administration play truant. It may mean avoidable delays that make the Census or NPR schedules go haywire.”
According to sources state government cannot terminate the already notified Census or NPR process, which is mandated by central laws. In fact, if any officer ignores Census duty, he or she is liable to pay Rs1,000 fine and, or serve imprisonment up to three years.
The officer added that just Like Census, NPR is also compulsory as it has been done under Citizenship Act.
“No state government can prevent a government officer from doing NPR duty as he or she will be obligated under Article 256,” the officer added.
On Tuesday, a deadly protest broke out across India over a controversial citizenship bill that seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from neighbouring countries, and has the potential to turn its Muslim citizens stateless, if they fail to trace their ancestry to the land.
