Why doesn't Amit Shah rule out NRC: Chidambaram

January 04, 2020 19:38

Noting that the National Register of Citizens in Assam has led to a "bitter experience," senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Saturday said the National Population Register of the Bharatiya Janata Party government "was clearly linked to the NRC" and asked why Home Minister Amit Shah was not stating in clear terms that the NRC exercise will not be carried out.

Former Home Minister Chidambaram in an exclusive interview said that the NPR carried out by the United Progressive Alliance government was different from the NPR exercise being carried out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi government as six questions have been added.

He said the NPR exercise was stopped after the population census during the Congress-led UPA government.

"Go back to what we did and what we did not do. The NPR was given to Census Commissioner and Registrar General only in selected states. It was an aid to the Census of 2011. So we did NPR in 2010 as an aid to the Census of 2011. Once the census was completed we stopped the matter. We did not go further. We did not do NRC. We did not even begin to think of

NRC. Today the context is very different. The BJP government has done an NRC in Assam," he said.

The former finance minister said that the NRC in Assam had yielded over 19 lakh people "stateless".

"We have with us a visible concrete example of what will happen if the NRC is done in a state like Assam," he said.

Asked about the assurance of top leaders of government that NRC and NPR were not linked, Chidambaram said that the "highest quarters (in government) don't inspire trust".

-- ANI

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