Opposition's Message To Chief Ministers Against Citizens' List

The National Population Register was intended to lay the groundwork for the potential roll-out of a National Registry of Citizens to remove illegal migrants from the land.

The 20 opposition parties that met today in Delhi agreed that all chief ministers who refuse to implement the National Registry of Citizens in their states would suspend the National Register of Populations mechanism, which would be the base of the register of citizens.

In Bengal and Kerala the NPR was already put on hold. The congress-ruled states ' chief ministers have also declared that they will not implement it.

A resolution signed today in this regard was seen as a sort of challenge to BJP allies including Nitish Kumar and chief ministers like Odisha's Naveen Patnaik and Andhra Pradesh's YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who tend to retain equal distance from Congress and the BJP.

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The National Population Register was supposed to lay the groundwork for bringing out a National Citizens Registry in the future to eliminate illegal migrants from the land. Some said it had been targeted at the Muslims.

Following the rash of protests against the NRC and the list of contentious citizens, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that, as of now, there is no talk of NRC nationwide.

Alleging the Congress to have "joined Urban Maoists and Naxalites," Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, "The resolution is not in the interests of national interest or security, nor is it in the interests of those minorities who have fled neighboring countries to escape persecution." He added that it would just "make Pakistan happy"

Last month, Mr Patnaik and Mr Reddy, along with opposition chief ministers, announced that they would not enable the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens to be enforced. But no practical measure has been made toward the National Population Registry.

After many nudges from the senior leaders of his party, Nitish Kumar, who reversed his party's stand on the citizenship law ahead and helped pass it in parliament, made his position on NRC clear today.