National Population Register’s (NPR) Data to be Collected with 16th Decennial Census

Union Cabinet on 23rd December 2019, announced that NPR would be updated and allocated 3500 crore for the same purpose.

What is NPR?

• The National Population Register (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.
• The objective of the NPR is to create a comprehensive identity database of every usual resident in the country. The database would contain demographic as well as biometric particulars.
• It was first done in 2010 and partial update was done in 2015.
• While NPR and Census would be conducted simultaneously, they are different. The former is the largest single source of a variety of statistical information on different characteristics of the people of India whereas the latter, only contains demographic information, more details are required for census like information on demography, economic activity, literacy and education, and housing and household amenities besides others.