Govt has a sinister agenda: PC on NPR

NEWDELHI:The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attacked senior Congress leader P Chidambaram yet again on Thursday as soon as he responded to a video posted by the former from his days as the home minister, underscoring his party’s links with the National Population Register (NPR).

Chidambaram, who was appointed the home minister after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008, had led the effort within the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to build a national database of residents. The first round of data was collected by Census enumerators in 2010.

BJP’s information technology cell head Amit Malviya on Twitter this week posted a 2010-11 video of Chidambaram where he spoke about the NPR. “This is the first time in human history that we are beginning to identify, count, enumerate, record and eventually issue an identity card to 120 crore people,” he was saying in the video.

Reacting almost 20 hours later, Chidambaram tweeted on Thursday that there was no mention of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in his statement.

“The BJP-led government has a larger and more sinister agenda and that is why the NPR approved by them yesterday is very dangerous and different in terms of the TEXT as well as the CONTEXT of NPR 2010,” he said.

In a counter-offensive, he insisted the BJP-led national coalition had a “larger and more sinister agenda” that made NPR 2020 “very dangerous and different” in text and context to NPR 2010.

He also challenged the government to stick to the 2010 version of the NPR if it had no intention of linking it to the controversial pan-India NRC proposed by the BJP to identify illegal immigrants living in India.

Hours later, Malviya responded to Chidambaram with another video. “Mr Chidambaram, Your memory seems to be failing you. Let me help you a bit here…,” he said. In this video, Chidambaram is explaining the NPR process and making a reference to the citizenship register.

Later, addressing a news conference in Delhi, senior Congress leader Ajay Maken also accused the BJP-led government of seeking to bring in the NRC in the garb of the NPR.

“The BJP government is trying to bring the NRC in the garb of NPR,” he said.