Bank staff arrested over NPR Controversy over ‘NPR’ numbers for Aadhaar card update

Monalisa Chaudhuri, Pinak Ghosh and Subhajoy Roy, TT, 6 February 2020, Calcutta: Two employees of a private bank were arrested on Wednesday in Calcutta after Aadhaar card update applicants complained that they were assigned “NPR” numbers.

NPR stands for National Population Register, which has become part of the new citizenship matrix over which protests have erupted in several parts of the country.

Bengal has officially suspended the NPR exercise. But a field (digital column) seeking the NPR number is still part of many bank forms following a Reserve Bank of India directive. However, it is not a mandatory field (a column that must be filled).

Controversy had broken out at the IndusInd Bank branch at Watgunge, south Calcutta, where the Calcutta Municipal Corporation was conducting the Aadhaar update camp.

The two arrested bank employees have been slapped with charges including provocation with the intent of causing riot, disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant, criminal conspiracy and under sections of the Information Technology Act.

The charges carry a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail. The two have been remanded in police custody till February 12.

The applicants had begun protesting on Tuesday after receiving their Aadhaar update receipts with the NPR number. Calcutta mayor and local MLA Firhad Hakim visited the area and later filed a complaint with Watgunge police station.

Sources said the CMC had floated tenders and contracted several banks to update Aadhaar cards, especially to help those who could not do it by themselves online. IndusInd is among these banks.

A corporation official said those who were updating the records had entered the Aadhaar number in the blank space for the NPR number. “When the receipt came out, the applicants found that there is an NPR number against their name. They got scared thinking that it was a ploy to enlist their names in the NPR,” the official said.

Several bank officials said this was optional. “One could well refuse to give the NPR number,” said a bank official.

Following Tuesday’s protests, the CMC has stopped Aadhaar updates in all its offices for the time being. But the order will have no bearing on banks and post offices, which can carry out the updates on their own.

Fear over the Centre’s new citizenship regime has driven lakhs of people in Bengal to camps to update their identity documents and get corrections done. The state government has also had to stall surveys because respondents were mistakenly linking them to the citizenship matrix.