Ministry of Home Affairs was responding to a question by Trinamool Congress member Mala Roy about the details of issue of National Identity Cards, which, as per the court of law, is an admissible identity proof as an Indian citizen.

| Photo Credit: PTI

The Lok Sabha was on Tuesday (August 5, 2025) informed that the Citizenship Act, 1955 provides that the Central Government is to compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue National Identity Cards to them.The Ministry of Home Affairs was responding to a question by Trinamool Congress member Mala Roy about details of cards, which, as per the court of law, is an admissible identity proof as an Indian citizen.Minister of State for Home, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, said in a written reply, “The Citizenship Act, 1955, as amended in 2004, provides the Central Government to compulsory register every citizen of India and issue National Identity Card to him. The procedure for the same have been laid down in the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Card) Rules, 2003.”The Rules state that National Identity are to be issued to Citizens whose particulars are entered in the National Register of Indian Citizens or National Register of Citizens (NRC).Assam is the only State where the NRC exercise has been undertaken, but the final register is yet to be published as the State government has challenged the draft NRC published in 2019, which excluded 19 lakh residents out of 3.29 crore applicants.The government has not taken any decision to update the National Population Register (NPR) during the forthcoming Population Census 2027. NPR is the first step for the creation of an NRC, and it was first compiled in 2010, and data was collected simultaneously during the first phase — called the House Listing and Housing (HLO) schedule — of the 2011 Census. The NPR database, which has the details of 119 crore residents, was updated in 2015-16.Following protests around the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and NRC in 2019-20, where 83 persons were killed across the country, the government informed the Parliament that “till now the Government has not taken any decision to prepare NRC at the national level”.The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropped the compilation of NRC from its 2024 general election manifesto even though it was one of the prominent poll promises in the party’s 2019 manifesto. Published - August 05, 2025 10:18 pm IST