india

Updated: Feb 11, 2020 05:18 IST

The first citizen of India, President Ram Nath Kovind, will likely be the first to be enrolled in the National Population Register (NPR) on April 1 when the exercise starts across the country, senior officials who did not want to be named said.

The President’s House did not comment. And although the President being the first to be enumerated is not something new, “given the controversy created around NPR... it sends out a strong reassuring message to people at large”, an official quoted above said on the condition of anonymity.

In a related development, the law ministry, in response to a query from the Registrar General of India (RGI), said that the government “need not notify” the scheduled set of questions for the NPR. The NPR database was created in 2010 and was updated in 2015-16.

Notifying NPR questions is not provided for in the law unlike the Census, the ministry is understood to have told the RGI. Given the concerns around the