The Hindu Business Line : Preparations on for issuing national identity cards

For security reasons, the Centre plans to allocate national ID cards with a pilot project of three million cards being rolled out in the next few months. Labelled the National Citizen Card, the pilot project has been approved by the Home Ministry and the Union Cabinet. The prototype of the Citizen Card has been designed by the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Talking to Business Line, Mr Vinod Duggal, Home Secretary, confirmed that the ID card will contain `complete details of the citizen' and the pilot project is ready for roll out. He, however, refused to be drawn into giving any definite time frame or costing, given that a number of clearances including financial clearance were still on.

"I would say it would happen sooner than expected though it has still to get through a number of clearances. It would definitely happen this financial year. The design of the card has been finalised and now we will go for global tendering. We have the Cabinet nod and the technical and financial bids are likely to lower costs than what we anticipate," Mr Duggal said.

The national ID card will primarily address security concerns of the country and to a large extent tackle issues such as infiltration through porous borders. The Indian initiative comes at a time when the US Senate's unanimous approval of Real ID Act in May 2005, slated to take effect in three years, has stirred a debate with some contending that it will be an incursion on privacy. And last month the UK called for the drafting of `common standards for national identity cards' and pushed for the adoption of biometric ID cards and associated standards across EU.

The National Citizen Card will be multifunctional with a stress on security, apart from having details on medical, insurance and banking records of the individual. The super ID card is expected to take recourse to biometric devices such as digitised thumbprint and retina scans.

Dr Darlie Koshy, Executive Director of NID, confirmed the institute has undertaken the design of the national citizen card. "Our design team developed the look and feel of the National Citizen Card to throw up the Indian motif. This included the colour palette as well as the surface design, drawing on traditional Indian textiles. The basic attempt on the design front is to ensure that the citizen will be proud to identify himself an Indian citizen," said Prof Pradyumna Vyas, Activity Chairperson, Integrated Design Services, NID.

The national citizen card project falls under the purview of the Registrar General of India. The project will cover nearly a dozen areas and deliberations were still on whether the pilot should get extended to border areas, Mr Duggal said. The implementing authority is the Census Commissioner of India, Mr D.K. Sikri.

Interestingly, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, while still a Presidential nominee, had called for the making of a national citizen card. He had, in June 2002, asked Nasscom to come out with an identification card that could double as voter ID card, bank passbook and ration card. "The national citizen card has to be an integrated approach from multiple departments and industries," Dr Kalam had said.

Concern has been expressed over the use of biometric scanners that could lead to the creation of a detailed dossier on an individual's physical movements while passing from one scanner to the next.

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Preparations on for issuing national identity cards