The Supreme Court turned down Tamil Nadu government's plea to modify its order suspending a one-man enquiry commission and the SIT to look into the Karur stampede. The court also took a critical view of a report filed by the Madras High Court registrar general.
A special dedicated web portal will be launched for self-enumeration during the upcoming Census, which will be available for both phases of the national enumeration exercise, officials said Monday.
The Bharat Mata controversy in Kerala shows how political and symbolic fights between the state and the Centre have taken attention away from education, throwing the state's oldest university into confusion and disorder, observes Shyam G Menon.
Census exercise with caste enumeration will be carried out with the reference date of October 1, 2026, in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and of March 1, 2027, in the rest of the country, the Home Ministry announced on Wednesday.
'The protection of secrecy and anonymity gets lost with this linking.'
The final NRC, a list of Indian citizens residing in Assam, was released in 2019 by excluding 19,06,657 people. However, it has not been notified by the Registrar General of India, leaving the controversial document without any official validity.
India's decadal census is likely to be further delayed after the budget allocated only Rs 574.80 crore for the exercise, a significant reduction from previous years. The census, originally scheduled for 2021, has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the government has not yet announced a new schedule. The budget allocation suggests that the exercise may not be carried out even after the delay. The upcoming census will be the first digital census, allowing citizens to self-enumerate using a dedicated portal. The exercise will be made compulsory for citizens who wish to self-enumerate, and Aadhaar or mobile numbers will be required. The census will include questions on household demographics, amenities, and economic status.
The census will be carried out with a reference date of October 1, 2026 in snow-bound areas like Ladakh and March 1, 2027 in the rest of the country, the notification said.
The next Census' findings will help identify the extent of India's ageing population and vulnerability levels.
The entire census and NPR exercise is likely to cost the government over Rs 12,000 crore, the officials said.
The much-delayed decadal census exercise and the work to update the National Population Register (NPR) are likely to begin early 2025 and the data will be declared by 2026, thus changing future census cycles completely, official sources said.
Forty MLAs from violence-hit Manipur have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that the state requires complete disarmament to foster an environment of peace and security.
The interim budget 2024-24 on Thursday allocated Rs 1,277.80 crore for census, a significant reduction from 2021-22 when Rs 3,768 crore was allocated and an indication that the exercise may not be carried out even after three years of delay.
Eligible applicants under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA) will be granted Indian nationality with retrospective effect as specified in the law, officials said on Tuesday.
"In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (2) of section 1 of the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023 (20 of 2023), the central government hereby appoints the 1st day of October, 2023, as the date on which the provisions of the said Act shall come into force," according to a notification issued by Mritunjay Kumar Narayan, Registrar General and Census Commissioner.
Complaints against Prateek Hajela on such issues were raised earlier by others also.
All Chinese nationals on the board of digital payments firm Paytm have been replaced by US and Indian citizens, while there is no change in existing shareholding, according to a regulatory filing of the company. Alipay representative Jing Xiandong, Ant Financial's Guoming Cheng, and Alibaba representatives Michael Yuen Jen Yao (US citizen) and Ting Hong Kenny Ho have ceased to be directors of the company, as per the regulatory document. According to a source, Paytm now has no Chinese national on its board.
Here is all you need to know about the National Population Register and worries over its links with NRC.
The Aam Aadmi Party has told the Supreme Court that it has not 'encroached' the land of the Delhi high court at Rouse Avenue in New Delhi and that the space was allotted to it in 2015.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud on Tuesday said the greatest challenge before the Indian judiciary is to eliminate barriers to accessing justice and make sure that the judiciary is inclusive and accessible to the last person in the line.
NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela said those people whose names have been excluded in the first list need not worry.
In a major relief for Imran Khan, Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday declared the former prime minister's arrest "illegal" and ordered his immediate release after he was produced before a bench on its orders.
The top court was hearing the plea of an organisation 'Lawyer's Voice' seeking a thorough investigation into the breach in Prime Minister Modi's security in Punjab and ensuring there is no such event in the future.
In a notification, the Registrar General of India said the decision has been taken as the exercise to enumerate citizens in the NRC, a list of Assam's residents, could not be completed within the specified date of June 30.
Declaring a man Indian citizen, the tribunal in Karimganj district held that though National Identity Cards are yet to be issued, 'but there is no doubt that this NRC Assam published in 2019 is nothing but Final NRC'.
The final list of the NRC will be published on August 31.
In the 'supplementary list' of the NRC, over 10,000 names were either wrongly included or excluded and necessary orders have been issued to delete nearly 4,800 'ineligible persons' from the document, state coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma said in an affidavit to the high court.
The West Bengal CM said she is shocked that the former President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed's family members' names have not been included in the NRC final draft.
For the purpose of NPR, a usual resident is defined as a person who has resided in a local area for past six months or more or a person who intends to reside in that area for the next six months or more.
The draft NRC was published on July 30 and included the names of 2.9 crore people out of the total 3.29 crore applications. There has been a huge controversy over the exclusion of 40 lakh people from the draft NRC.
A bench of justices Abhay S Oka and Prashant Kumar Mishra, which heard the matter in a special hearing, urged the Chief Justice of India to assign the matter to a larger bench.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana also appointed the Inspector General of the National Investigation Agency, Director General of Police of Chandigarh, the Registrar General of the Punjab and Haryana high court and the Additional DGP (Security) of Punjab as members to the Justice Malhotra panel.
'This updated NPR database along with Aadhaar Number would become the mother database and can be used by various government departments...' the home ministry declared in July 2015. 'UID/Aadhaar has been used as a fish bait to ensnare and entrap present and future generations of citizens,' warns Gopal Krishna.
'We are facing a crackdown for more than a year. Our permission to collect funds was cancelled. Our bank accounts were frozen.' 'We believe that our work in India is very important. We want to be the environment watchdog. We do not want to waste time fighting legal battles.'
The Delhi high court on Friday issued summons to Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera and Netta D'Souza on a civil defamation suit filed by Union minister Smriti Irani seeking damages of over Rs 2 crore for allegedly making baseless allegations against her and her daughter.
Three experts on cyber security, digital forensics, networks and hardware were roped in by the Supreme Court on Wednesday to "enquire, investigate and determine" whether Pegasus spyware was used for snooping on citizens and their probe would be monitored by former apex court judge R V Raveendran.
The Centre on Tuesday said it was discussing with state governments the preparations for updating the National Population Register from April 1 to September 30. Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said in the Lok Sabha that no document will be collected during the exercise, which will be carried out along with the house-listing phase of Census 2021.
A form carrying questions as part of the NPR exercise will be finalised soon, ministry officials said. The information available on the website of the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, however, says the NPR database would contain demographic as well as biometric details.
The draft published on July 30, 2018 included the names of 2.9 crore people out of total applications of 3.29 crore.
The final NRC, unique to Assam, will be published on August 31.