[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-64

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=343124


KALAM-POLLS     PRINT   EMAIL
Evolve system which disqualifies politician at nomination stage: Kalam

NEW DELHI, DEC 20 (PTI)

In this age of sting operations "exposing" corruption among
Parliamentarians, President A P J Abdul Kalam today suggested an
election system that could disqualify a politician at the stage of
filing of nomination papers itself.

Mooting the idea of citizen identity cards and enhanced connectivity,
the President visualised a scenario in a networked world where the
political ability of a person could be ascertained when he comes to
file his papers.

"These days many wrong fellows are elected to Lok Sabha and Rajya
Sabha. I visualise a scenario where a candidate files his nomination
from a particular constituency and the election officer verifies his
authenticity from the national citizen database through multi-factor
authentication, through a multipurpose citizen ID card," he said
addressing the 'India Empowered Summit' organised by The Indian
Express Group here.

Forseeing an extensively networked India, the President said as the
election officer seeks details on his computer system using the
election hopeful's citizen ID card "all the details arrive at his
computer terminal within a few swconds automatically by the act of
e-governance software agents which crawl across the state and central
government web services directories and present it in real time
basis." Kalam said the polling percentage can be increased by allowing
people to vote from their homes through virtual polling booths.

The President said "to establish a system that I have visualised, we
need a high bandwidth broadband connectivity across many government
departments" from where information could be drawn in real-time basis
to achieve the goal of good governance.