The Andhra Pradesh government will pass a resolution in the state Assembly to request the Centre to exclude the new contentious questions added to the National Population Register. The questions introduced in the new NPR form include details of parents’ birth, Aadhaar number, passport number, mobile phone number, voter ID number and mother tongue.

Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy urged the Centre to update the population register as it existed in the year 2010. “Some of the questions proposed in the NPR are causing insecurities in the minds of minorities of my state,” the chief minister tweeted. “After elaborate consultations within our party, we have decided to request the Central government to revert the conditions to those prevailing in 2010.”

“To this effect, we will also introduce a resolution in the upcoming Assembly session,” Reddy added.

The National Population Register – a list of “usual residents” – is scheduled to be updated simultaneously with the house-listing phase of the decennial Census exercise from April 1 to September 30. “Usual residents” are those who have stayed at a place for six months or intend to stay there for the next six months. The Centre has argued that the National Population Register has nothing to do with the National Register of Citizens and is part of the Census.

As first reported by Scroll.in, the NPR is the first step to creating an all-India National Register of Citizens, which would identify undocumented migrants residing in India. This has led to scepticism from states ruled by parties that are not part of the National Democratic Alliance. Till now, West Bengal and Kerala have suspended all work related to the NPR, while several Congress-ruled states are mulling similar action.

Last month, the Bihar Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution not to implement the National Register of Citizens in the state. It had also said the National Population Register would be implemented in Bihar in the old 2010 format. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is a key ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, had reportedly surprised the MLAs with the resolution.