Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Pleas Against National Population Register

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the pleas challenging the process to compile a National Population Register as being a violation to Right to Privacy of an individual.

The top court issued a notice to the central government on the petitions filed by three farmers and tagged the case along with other petitions challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act.

The petitioners—Udagar Ram, Bimalesh Kumar Yadav and Sanjay Safi—argued that NPR is an exercise which is being conducted alongside the Census 2021, but the data collected under NPR does not enjoy the same protection as the census data.

“The Census Act, 1948 provides that no information collected during the census would be used in civil or criminal proceedings nor would be disclosed, the petition—reviewed by BloombergQuint—said. “The information collected under the NPR exercise does not guarantee the same protection.”

Also, the rules under which NPR data is collected don't provide protection against misuse, unlike Aadhaar and census data, according to the petition. NPR data without adequate protection, it said, may lead to a possible unsanctioned state surveillance of private citizens.

Besides, the petitioners argued that in contrast with the census, the data collected under NPR has to be voluntary, but the NPR manual doesn't direct the officer to clarify this fact with those whose data is being collected.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear the case in February.