Neeraj Chauhan

neeraj.chauhan@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : A group of around 100 retired civil servants released an open letter on Thursday, asking people to insist that the government withdraw recent amendments to the Citizenship Act and scrap the plan to build an all-India National Register of Citizens.

The retired civil servants, who have come together under the aegis of the Constitutional Conduct Group, also countered the government’s latest effort to delink the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the ongoing National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC).

“The three issues are linked,” it said in the open letter designed to “acquaint people with the facts” and “emphasise why these measures need to be resolutely opposed”.

The open letter has the names of 106 retired civil servants, including around 25 former secretaries to the central government. The list of signatories includes three former foreign secretaries, Shyam Saran, Shiv Shankar Menon and Sujatha Singh; former Indian ambassador to the UK Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, former telecom regulator Rahul Khullar, former chief of Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) Meeran C Borwankar; former Asian Development Bank executive director PK Lahiri; former cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar; former chief economic adviser Nitin Desai; former central information commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah; former Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung; and retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Harsh Mander.