the goan I network
PANAJI
Ex-IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan on Tuesday exhorted the people of Goa to collectively refuse to give any details when government officials come around to collect personal details for the National Population Register (NPR).
“The NPR is very much a part of the National Register for Citizens (NRC). The government wants us to think the NPR is a part of the census, because there is a legal provision that if a citizen refuses to provide details for census, they will be jailed. But there is no such provision for the NPR, just a fine of one thousand rupees,” Gopinathan said, adding that there is nothing that the government could do if people collectively refuse to give their details for the NPR.
“If there is a mass movement against the NPR, no one will be individually penalised,” he said.
The NPR will be carried out in Goa from April 16 to May 30, according to the notification issued by Director of Planning and Statistics Dr Durga Prasad, earlier this month. Interestingly, Durga Prasad tags the NPR exercise with that of the census in the notification.
Opposition to the NPR, like the CAA, has been swelling both in Goa and across the country as it is seen to be a prelude to the implementation of the NRC, nationwide.
Gopinathan also said that NPR-NRC would be a long drawn out affair of 10-20 years, and that it was simply an exercise in hatred by the current regime at the Centre which will only use it to single out and target Muslims.
Meanwhile, Gopinathan urged people, and Goans in particular, to make their ideological stand on the CAA-NRC-NPR known, especially if they were against it.
“In a democracy, the government is only one part, but there are people like you and me who should stand up for our fellow citizens. Democracy doesn’t change to dictatorship when a dictator comes in. It changes when the people stop asking questions,” he said.
He also questioned why those who were against the CAA were not as vocal about it as those who were pro-CAA, and urged people to speak out and debate in a civil manner.
“Our biggest curse in India is that we teach our children not to talk about politics. We need to teach them to discuss politics civilly,” the former IAS officer said.
Gopinathan spelled out the problems that NRC caused in Assam, and asked how the government expected the exercise to go for the whole country with over a billion people.
