Security, welfare on the cards with UID cards

The appointment of IT czar Nandan Nilekani as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India to develop multipurpose identity cards for the country’s 1.2 billion people comes as a major boost to the project that had been hanging fire since 2003.

The ambitious project would not only eliminate the existing multiple identification mechanism but also go a long way in checking illegal immigration.

The Rs1.5-lakh-crore scheme to be monitored by the Planning Commission entails issuing unique identity cards to every citizen. The previous UPA government had allocated Rs100 crore to the scheme in the interim budget early this year. The general budget to be presented next month would make a further financial provision for the purpose.

All voters would be covered under the scheme, for which a computer database is being prepared by the Registrar General of India. The national population register so formed would become the database for issuing the cards. According to an estimate, nearly 100 million cards would be issued in the next three years. The entire population would be covered in the subsequent phases.

Sources said the database would be directly linked to various government agencies such as the election commission, income-tax department and the ones dealing with social security schemes for the welfare of the underprivileged. In fact this stratum of society is likely to be covered on priority, so that better services could be provided to the people below poverty line.

The multipurpose identity cards would contain at least 16 personal details of an individual. The cards would be created using the sophisticated Scosta application, which is a secured data storage devise. It would facilitate verification of a person’s antecedents and prevent fraud, particularly in the matter of submitting certificates with job applications.

The project was conceived when the NDA government enacted the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003. It was followed by the launch of a pilot project that covered 31 lakh people in 12 states and one union territory (UT). But it could take off only in 2007. Following the November 26 terrorist attack in Mumbai, the UPA government launched another pilot project covering 13 districts in 12 states and a UT.

The project has another side to it. It has a huge potential to create jobs. According an estimate, it might create one lakh jobs in the coming three years. The jobs would include data collectors, managers, delivery channels, chip designers, application and software designers and networking analysts.