The government today formally said in parliament it is not planningto conduct the nationwide National Register of Citizen (NRC) exercise.

This announcement came in a written reply, Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said,"Till now, the government has not taken any decision to prepare NationalRegister of Indian Citizens at the national level."

This was first obliquely announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a public rally of the party which created some confusion as only in the previous parliament Home Minister Amit Shah had informed the house that NRC was in the offing.

With this clarification, the government hopes to calmtempers of those who have been protesting the NRC and the Citizenship AmendmentAct (CAA) for the past two months.

"I want to tell the 130 crore citizens of India that since my government has come to power, since 2014, there has been no discussion on NRC anywhere. Only after the Supreme Court's order, this exercise was done for Assam," Prime Minister Modi had said.