The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003

The central government enacted The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules in December 2003 for The Citizenship Act, 1955. The Rules lay down guidelines for the government to prepare the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRC). They state that a house-to-house enumeration of the details of individuals and families (including name, place of birth and citizenship status) should be carried out. In 2009, these Rules were amended to include special provisions and a schedule for the NRC in Assam, where the influx of Bangladeshi immigrants has been a matter of public debate and judicial scrutiny for many years. The first NRC in Assam was released in 1951, and the most recent NRC, which came out on August 31, 2019, excluded over 19.6 lakh applicants from a total of over 3.3 crore.