Congress also said NPR first step towards NRC: BJP

A day after facing opposition fire, BJP on Wednesday dug out Congress-led UPA government's replies to Parliament to highlight the linkages between the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens.

Under attack from the Congress for linking NPR to the NRC, BJP leaders pointed out that there was no difference between the stand of the government during the UPA and the NDA regimes.

“The then MoS Home Jitendra Singh replied on 28 Aug 2012 elaborating how NPR is the first step towards NRC,” BJP IT Cell in-charge Amit Malviya said attaching photographs of a Parliament Question on the NPR.

“The NPR is the first step towards the creation of a National Register of Indian Citizen,” the then Minister of State for Home Jitendra Singh had responded to questions put by the then Lok Sabha members Harin Pathak and Yogi Adityanath.

Malviya also posted videos of the then Home Minister P Chidambaram at the launch of the NPR exercise in 2010.

“It is for the first time in human history we are beginning to identify, count, enumerate, record and eventually issue an identity card to 120 cr people. An exercise of this kind has not been attempted anywhere else in the world,” Chidambaram is heard as saying in the video.