In India—which has a history of partition on the basis of religion and ethnicity—concerns about mass migration, porous borders and terrorist infiltration have prompted successive governments to dabble in the idea of sifting out illegal residents.
But who is an Indian resident and who is an Indian citizen? Several prime ministers, including Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, have asked their home ministers, in vain, for an answer. So, when Home Minister Amit Shah rose to tell Parliament that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would be implemented nationwide, he was not the first to do so.
While Shah had multiple points to defend the NRC, his bureaucrats and intelligence agencies perhaps did not tell him, at least in detail, why such an exercise had so far been unsuccessful.
Back in 2003, then deputy prime minister and home minister L.K. Advani told the consultative committee of the home ministry that his government was serious about implementing the Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) project. The objective was to prepare a National Population Register and a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC).
A few years earlier, the Kargil Review Committee had recommended compulsory registration of citizens and non-citizens because there was illegal immigration. The Citizenship Act, 1955, was amended and the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003 were framed. The rules included the NPR, its implementation and how it would form the basis of the NRIC. The objective was to issue national identity cards to citizens and multipurpose residence cards to non-citizens.
There was initial resistance by several states, but a pilot project was soon launched in a dozen states. Bureaucratic hurdles and delays, however, dragged the project into the UPA government’s tenure.
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