[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-24

[Taha Mehmood]

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=91199

Indian Express

Pune Edition

Tuesday , July 13, 2004

EC plans biometric I-cards

A long-term plan, extension of multi-purpose national identity card project
Vishwas Kothari

Pune, July 12: The Election Commission is toying with the idea of
introducing the use of biometric identification features like thumb
impression embedded in electronically-readable cards to check poll rigging.

''They (biometric cards) are a little farther away but a desirable goal
possible with the use f electronic technology,'' Election Commissioner (EC)
of India N Gopalaswami told The Indian Express on the sidelines of a
training programme on 'Electoral management and administration' at the
Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) here on
Monday.

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This forms part of the long-term plans and is not likely to be effective
during elections in the near future, he added.

The biometric I-cards may come as an extension of the ambitious
multi-purpose national identity card (MNIC) project under active
consideration by the government.

Citing Home Minister Shivraj Patil's statement last Saturday, Gopalaswami
said the ministry had already embarked on a pilot project covering a
population of 30 lakh spread over 13 states and Union territories. The idea
is to ultimately provide a national identity card with an identity number to
all citizens and thereby creating a national population register (NPR).

''Our first requirement will be cards having biometric features included.
Once the Home Ministry's experiment is successful, the same can be borrowed.
The same cards can form the basis for polls later on,'' he said.

''Nations like the United Kingdom, which is working on a similar project,
are talking of 2013 as the targeted deadline because they must have made a
positive assessment of the problems such a project faces especially covering
the last 5 per cent of the population,'' he said.

He said the Commission had accorded top priority to ensuring that complaints
of missing names from the electoral rolls — witnessed on a large-scale
during the March Lok Sabha polls — are not repeated.

''We have taken a fairly extensive and ambitious programme of enlightening
voters and I am sure that will pay dividends,'' he said.

Logistics was the other problem that the Commission will have to tackle.
''Maharashtra has never presented any poll-related law-and-order problem in
the past,'' Gopalaswami pointed out.

NO POLLS DURING FEST
EC N Gopalaswami said the dates for Assembly elections in Maharashtra had
not yet been finalised. He assured that the Commission would consider the
request by political parties that the dates be finalised after giving apt
consideration to the 10-day Ganesh festival in September, when large section
of the population are on vacation. ''That definitely will be done,'' he
said.