Sharing details of Aadhaar, passport number, voter ID and driving licence during the planned National Population Register (NPR) exercise will be mandatory if you possess these documents, home ministry sources clarified on Wednesday.
A senior official explained “voluntary” or “optional” sharing of identification documents only meant respondents would not be required to provide details of Aadhaar, driving licence, voter ID or passport number if these have not been issued to them in the first place. But if one has the documents, the information is to be provided even though no document needs to be shown as proof.
While announcing the Cabinet’s approval of funding for Census 2021 and NPR 2020 on December 24 last year, commerce minister Piyush Goyal had said sharing Aadhaar number during NPR would be “optional”. However, information & broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar said NPR will involve self-certification or self-declaration while home minister Amit Shah said “voluntary” would mean it is okay if some information is not there.
The official explanation on Wednesday cleared a prevailing impression that a respondent can choose not to provide information relating to the documents. While the effort will be to persuade respondents to provide information, explaining its utility, a rarely invoked provision entails a fine of up to Rs 1,000 on the head of the family for not sharing correct particulars of household members.
An official explained the legal implications of “optional” and “compulsory”, saying, “It is indeed optional as the fields can be left blank if you don’t possess Aadhaar number, passport, driving licence or voter ID. ‘Compulsory’ would mean that you would be required to procure these documents to enter the said details in the NPR form.”
According to sources, during the Census pre-test conducted last year, more than 80% respondents had willingly shared Aadhaar details. “The only field that got an adverse response was PAN, which has been dropped.
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