the goan I network
PANAJI
The government has announced dates when the National Population Registry (NPR) will be updated in Goa, but Goans are in suspense over how the exercise will play out and whether it will be mandatory for every citizen to answer questions asked by enumerating official sent to their doorstep.
From April 16 to May 30, it has been announced that the NPR will be updated in the State. However it is as yet unclear what will be the consequences for those who do not wish to give information on moral grounds, given the strong link between the NPR and the National Registry for Citizens (NRC) which, if the government goes ahead, will be updated across the country.
Noted advocate from Margao Cleofato Coutinho on Friday expressed apprehension about how the exercise would play out in Goa. “We don’t know yet what the format for the NPR is. Only the dates are out now. The government may even make not giving NPR information a punishable offense -- we really don’t know,” said Coutinho, speaking at the “Interactive Dialogue on CAA-NRC-NPR” organised by the Goa Study Group at the International Center Goa (ICG) on Friday.
Coutinho was backed by Asif Hussain, the co-ordinator of the Center for Study of Philosophy and Humanities, who expressed that the NPR was the first step to establish the NRC in India, which together with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 is “unethical and immoral.”
Hussain also slammed the whole idea of a database for citizens on grounds that there was no law that gave power to a low level government staff collecting information door-to-door to decide who is a doubtful citizen or not. “The discretion given to the lower level government staff to decide and declare doubtful citizens while conducting these exercises is a very dangerous step,” he said.
“In a country where caste hatred, religious hatred, and political motivations are so real, there are grave loopholes where Indian citizens would get left out and be put in detention centers,” said Hussain, questioning where the government would get money to build detention centres for crores of people, when the economy was suffering.
He also highlighted other facts like only 52% of India’s population having birth certificates as of 2017, and spelling mistakes, technical errors, and age mismatches which lead to lakhs being excluded from the NRC in Assam.
Meanwhile, Coutinho stressed on how regressive the whole NPR-NRC-CAA process was in the 21st century and said that nowhere in the world was citizenship
decided based on religion... “...not even in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.”
Coutinho also laid stress on how if the CAA-NRC-NPR was meant to be an exercise on “humanitarian grounds” to let in those who were persecuted in other countries, then “humanity could not be selective.”
The discussion at the ICG also centered on how the Ahmediyas, who were a part of Islam, were persecuted in Pakistan, but how India would not be giving them citizenship under the CAA simply because they were Muslim!
“It’s an insult to our intelligence. Why would a persecuted Hindu and a persecuted Muslim be treated differently?” he demanded.
After the comments made by the three speakers -- Parag Rao, Cleofato Coutinho, and Asif Hussain -- there was a heated discussion between the speakers and the around 60 odd citizens gathered, on the different aspects of the CAA-NPR-NRC.
