new delhi the controversy over national population register npr refuses to cease while opposition parties including congress are opposing the narendra modi governments decision to implement it the country had witnessed sharp differences within the congressled upa government over the issue about eight years ago on friday former congress president rahul gandhi registered a strong protest against npr calling it an attack on the poor people speaking in raipur he said whether npr or nrc national register of citizens it is a tax on poor people of the country poor people will have to go to officers and show their documents and give bribe they will have to give bribe if there is a slight mistake in their names crores of rupees will be pulled out of the pockets of the poor and will be given to the same 15 rich people this is the truth it is an attack on the people he saidhowever npr was launched during the upa rule in the wake of the mumbai terror attacks on november 26 2008 the resident identity card programme was initially meant for the nine coastal states however under the then home minister p chidambaram in 2010 the scheme was sought to be extended to the rest of the countrythe home ministry sought rs 6700 crore to fund the programme which was supposed to distribute cards using datacarrying chips photographs and fingerprints of the holderhowever the then planning commission deputy chairperson montek singh ahluwalia and unique identification authority of india uidai chief nandan nilekani objected to the resident identity card scheme uidai was in the process of collecting data for the governments aadhaar projectthe two government departments were fighting over the use of biometrics and the issue of duplication of datathe home ministry maintained that the registrar general of india rgi under it was mandated to collect data through the npr uidai claimed that it had also been authorised to do the samechidambaram sought clarity from then prime minister manmohan singh whether rgi or uidai would collect biometric data the home ministry doubted the security of the data collected by uidai as it was not verified by a government servantuidai had hired private agencies to collect data which was objected to by the home ministryin a bid to resolve the issues manmohan singh convened two meetings of senior cabinet colleagues the first one was held on january 25 2012 besides ahluwalia the meeting was attended by the then finance minister pranab mukherjee chidambaram nilekani and the then national security advisor nsa shivshankar menontwo days later a cabinet meeting was held to resolve the issues it was agreed in the meetings that the purposes of home ministryled npr and uidai were different and therefore both would continue simultaneouslyit was also decided that the two agencies would use the biometric data collected by each other but in case of discrepancies or duplication the data collected by npr would prevailbut slowly and gradually while aadhaar project got a major push npr was rendered