Nitish Not in Favour of Citizens Register

Political Desk

After Opposition-ruled states such as West Bengal and Kerala, Bihar may also not accept Citizens Register. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today on Monday equivocally dissed the National Register of Citizens project, by telling the Bihar assembly that there was no question of rolling out the citizens register.

Mr Nitish Kumar told a boisterous opposition in Bihar Assembly that there was no question of rolling out the citizens register, that wanted special session to be convened to discuss NRC and NPR. He said that NRC and NPR had always been only envisaged in the context of Assam and not the entire country.

However, Mr Nitish Kumar did not give any commitment on the population register project which, his deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi has announced, will begin on May 15 and continue till May 28.

Opposition have declared that they will not allow the population register since it was meant to create the mother database that will be used to build the citizens’ register. Opposition parties such as Tejashwi Yadav’s Rashtriya Janta Dal and the Congress wanted Nitish Kumar to block the population register also, particularly since the Centre was likely to increase the number of questions during the nationwide census.