|
01 Jul 2014, 03:32 PM
|
R Jagannathan
Firstpost.com
The home ministry under Rajnath Singh looks set to give primacy to giving IDs to citizens based on the National Population Register (NPR) idea and downplaying the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI's) Aadhaar number. The ministry sees NPR as more important because the BJP manifesto talked about identifying illegal migrants and deporting them; Aadhaar, fathered by former Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani, focuses on giving IDs to all residents, whether citizen or not.
According to an Indian Express report(30 June), the NPR enumeration will be fairly detailed and has a three-year rollout schedule, with the end-register being linked to voter IDs. This means one purpose of the NPR would be to delete non-citizens from the voting list – at the very least. Though the biometric database accumulated by Aadhaar (over 600 million people) will be integrated into the NPR database, it is obvious that NPR is being given precedence over Aadhaar in the new dispensation.
However, the NDA would do well to exclude politics from its final decision. It would be making a serious mistake if it chooses one over the other: it has to make both the NPR and Aadhaar systems work together to generate optimum results. In fact, the NDA should use the NPR process to clarify how it will treat illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The right thing to do is to treat them as legal residents - which is what we do with Nepali citizens residing in India - but without voting rights, till they fulfil the requirements of citizenship.
This is where Aadhaar comes in. The main focus of Aadhaar is to give all residents a unique number which enables the government to target benefits to the right persons. The downside is that Aadhaar has no legal standing and affords no privacy protection to the biometric information collected from people (iris and finger prints). This has huge potential for misuse.
The NPR is on more solid ground as it is
|
|
|
|
|
|
|