Eleven coastal villages to get smart cards by mid October

Addressing officials at a district-level meeting at the Deputy Commissioner’s Office here on Tuesday, Anilkumar said that the NPR-ID project is being implemented under the provisions of Rule 3(4) of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003. Accordingly, he said, identity numbers will be given to all citizens above 15 years after obtaining 18 types of details including name, job, address, fingerprints and photo from them. Meanwhile, smart cards will be issued to all citizens above 18 years, he said adding that the field work will start from October 18.

Anilkumar said that while Deputy Commissioner will act as the District Registrar, Tahsildars will be the sub-district registrar and village accountants will perform the duties as local registrars under the NPR-ID project. About 80 enumerators including gram panchayat secretaries, school teachers and anganwadi teachers will collect the data in 11 coastal villages/hamlets in the districts, he added.

A frame of households will be prepared through houselisting operations followed by data entry of individual particulars electronically, he informed. The technical support for the implementation of the project will be provided by the Bharat Electronics Limited, he added.

He said that a total of 208 villages including 68 in Udupi district and 129 district in Uttar Kannada will be covered under the project in the state in the first phase. Athikribettu, Padupanambur, Pavanje, Haleyangadi, Malavoor, Arkula, Amblamogaru, Harekala, Pavoor, Talapady and Chelliru regions will be covered in Dakshina Kannada district.

The project will be implemented in cities and towns in the second phase, he said adding that the project is being taken up in 9 states and 4 union territories across the nation.
Anilkumar said that the project will be completed by the end of January, 2010. Penal provisions of the Rules will be initiated against officials who do not co-operate with the project, he warned.

‘Not a citizenship card’
Deputy Commissioner V Ponnuraj made it clear in the meeting that the ID cards issued to residents of coastal region under the NPR-ID project in no way will serve as a citizenship ID card. The process of NPR-ID prject will continue even after the completion of the first phase, he said adding that citizens can update data continuously in future.

In the later stage, the inputs stored through the NPR-ID project will also be shared with the Unique Identity (UID) project of the central government, he informed. Superintendent of Police Dr A S Rao, Additional SP Ramesh and Additional DC Prabhakar Sharma were present.