The Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance government in Assam has written to the Registrar General of India (RGI), expressing its willingness to be the part of the nationwide exercise of preparing the National Population Register (NPR) in the state.

The move comes after the state government is continuing to face backlash over Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens (NRC). It may be mentioned that the RGI had excluded Assam from carrying out NPR exercise in view of the recent exercise of updating the NRC.

The objective of the NPR will be to create a comprehensive identity database of every resident of the country. The census will kickstart from April 1st, 2020.

In a letter to the RGI, the General Administration Department (GAD) of Assam stated that the NPR would help the government to plan and execute welfare schemes, the Asian Age reported.

The NPR is a Register of usual residents of the country. It is being prepared at the local (Village/sub-Town), sub-District, District, State and National level under provisions of the Citizenship Act 1955 and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003.

It is mandatory for every usual resident of India to register in the NPR. A usual resident is defined for the purposes of NPR as a person who has resided in a local area for the past 6 months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next 6 months or more.

Meanwhile, the BJP-ruled Tripura has become the first state in the Northeast to announce the preparation of the NPR. The state is preparing to collect the necessary data to prepare the Centre’s proposed NPR.

Tripura Census Department Director Pradip Kumar Chakraborty told the media that the first phase of NPR data collection in the state would begin from May 16th, 2020 and continue till June 29th, 2020.

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