Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday announced that the Bengal government would not send any representative to a preparatory meeting on the National Population Register (NPR) to be held by the Centre in Delhi on Friday.

“We will not take part in the meeting on the NPR in Delhi on Friday…. We will not implement the NPR in the state,” the chief minister said at Rani Rashmoni Avenue where the Trinamul students’ wing is agitating against the new citizenship regime.

Sources in the state secretariat said that the Centre had asked all the states to participate in a preparatory meeting for “Census, 2021/ Updation of NPR, 2020”, on Friday. Nodal officers from all the states are supposed to attend the meeting, where the Centre is likely to set out the next step in the exercise.

“There will be two sessions — one for the census and another for the NPR. The state has decided to attend the session where census-related activities will be discussed, but not to attend the second session where instructions on the NPR would be given to the states,” an official in Bengal said.

Sources said the chief minister had held a series of meetings with officials. “The chief minister told the officials that the intention behind the NPR was not yet clear. She said the state would not take part in the preparatory meetings until the confusion over the NPR was resolved,” said a source.

On December 16, the state home department had issued an order asking district authorities to put NPR-related activities on hold.

Later, the state cabinet ratified the government decision to keep the NPR process in abeyance for the time being because of a lack of clarity on several issues.

Trinamul insiders said Mamata had announced the decision publicly as she wanted to send out a message to the common people.

“The chief minister wanted to signal that she had not changed her stand even after the Opposition parties raised questions about her meeting with the Prime Minister at Raj Bhavan,” said a minister.

The minister added that a loud message needed to be sent out as a couple of municipalities had issued some orders “erroneously” on updating the NPR even after the state government had stayed all related activities.

The Kamarhati municipality in North 24-Parganas had issued an order to the heads of schools to send the names of enumerators who would carry out the census and the NPR exercise on January 7.

“We wanted to assure the people that no NPR-related activity would be carried by the municipality,” said Gopal Saha, chairman of the municipality.

“The Opposition parties were spreading rumours after an order was erroneously issued because of the negligence of some officials of the civic body earlier this month.”