Subramanian Swamy said Arundhati Roy’s comments on the National Population Register amount to sedition and called her a danger for the society.

Firebrand BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has demanded author Arundhati Roy to be arrested under the National Security Act (NSA). Swamy said that Roy’s comments on the National Population Register amount to sedition and called her a danger for the society.

“This amounts to sedition. In effect, you are saying it is an illegitimate government. Leave aside the sanctity of the law, even for the national survey if officials ask how many kgs of rice you eat, you have to tell the truth,” he said.

“It is a matter of national security. She should be arrested under NSA. She is a danger to the society by spreading this kind of saying… she is trying to bring the nation in dispute, creating hatred against the Hindu community by siding with the Muslim community and provoking them,” the BJP leader told Times Now.

The Rajya Sabha MP’s remark comes after Roy at a protest in Delhi suggested people to oppose the National Population Register by furnishing wrong details to the government officials involved in the exercise. Stating that the NPR will serve as a database for the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Roy while addressing a protest gathering at Delhi University, said, “They will visit your homes, take your name, phone number and ask for documents like Aadhaar and driving licences. The NPR will become database of NRC. We need to fight against it and have a plan. When they visit your home for NPR, and ask for your name give them some different name… For address say 7 RCR. A lot of subversion will be needed, we are not born to face lathis and bullets.”

Arundhati Roy even claimed that the National Register of Citizens was targeted against the Muslim community.

Several opposition leaders and eminent personalities are claiming that the NPR is a first step towards the NRC. However, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said there was no link between the NPR and the NRC and their databases cannot be used for each other.

The Union Cabinet earlier this week approved Rs 3,941.35 crore for updating the National Population Register. The NPR is a list of usual residents of the country. The exercise is proposed to begin in April next year. The data for NPR was collected in 2010 along with the house-listing phase of the Census of India 2011. The data was updated in 2015 by conducting a door-to-door survey.