The United Muslim Action Committee has urged the State government to stay any work taken up on the updation of the National Population Register after holding consultations with the Kerala government and experts.
The government should take steps to ensure that citizens in the State were protected from “arbitrary and discriminatory” measures such as National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC). Measures should be initiated to ensure that conduct of public services was in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and not contrary to them.
A delegation of the committee headed by MIM president and MP Asaduddin Owaisi called on Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to represent their objections to the exercise launched by the Central government with regard to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), NPR and NRIC. During the meeting that lasted more than three hours, the delegation expressed concern that the CAA had incorporated a religious qualification for the first time and, when seen in the light of NRC, it would create the possibility of an avoidable humanitarian disaster.
The link between the NPR and NRIC should be clearly understood as the exercise would cause disproportionate hardship to the most marginalised communities, besides imposing unnecessary and excessive burden on government employees and civil servants. The Constitution placed the power and responsibility of public order on the State governments. Burdening citizens, especially from poor and marginalised sections, with the arbitrary procedure under the provisions of the CAA, NPR and NRC was likely to deepen the fissures in society and empower miscreants to disrupt public order.
Recalling the experience of the NRC in Assam, Mr. Owaisi said the Assam government had chosen to reject the NRC and was exploring options, including reverification. In contrast, the Union government had consistently promised a nationwide NRC. “This duality of the government policy pertaining to NRC is clear evidence that this exercise places unnecessary burden on common people and that there is no express public interest that is served by nationwide NRC,” he said.
The CAA too was discriminatory and arbitrary as could be seen from the legislation which not only violated the constitutional values of equality and secularism, but also fundamentally altered the criteria for citizenship. “When read along with the procedure provided for the NRIC, it is evident that the CAA is meant to act as a safety measure for any non-Muslims excluded from the NRIC,” he said, adding if there was any doubt about the purpose of the Act, the same was clarified by the Assam government’s Finance Minister and the Union Home Minister.
Explaining the inconsistencies in the process adopted for the NPR and NRC, he said excluding disadvantaged groups and further entrenching their inequality was obviously a threat to public order. In view of this, the government should take steps to ensure peace and social harmony in the State and prevent threats to public order, which was a likely result of the NPR-NRIC, he said.
Later, Mr. Owaisi told reporters that the Chief Minister had promised to take a decision in this regard in a couple of days. The MIM on its part had decided to conduct a meeting at Nizamabad on December 27 to explain to people the ill-effects of the proposed exercise by the Central government.
