In a major decision, according security paramount importance, the Centre has decided to go ahead with enrolment process of citizens under the National Population Register (NPR) and issue national identity cards to citizens at the earliest.
In all likelihood, a new proposal of enrolling citizens only through NPR and issuing national identity card will go to the union cabinet next month.
Sources said, the office of registrar general of India (RGI) is well prepared to take up the challenge as it has ample experience of issuing multi-purpose national identity cards (MNIC) in all the coastal areas.
The instructions given by union home minister Rajnath Singh clearly means a departure from UIDAI's Aadhar card that is meant for all the residents living in India.
However, as the decision on Aadhar card was taken by union cabinet during UPA government's tenure and formally scrapping it would require a decision at the same level.
In a review meeting of the RGI division on Wednesday, the home minister also asked for updating the National Population Register (RGI) database through its linkages with birth and death registration system.
He also directed the office of RGI to take NPR project to its logical conclusion, which is creation of national registration of Indian citizens (NRC), a pet project of the erstwhile NDA government that had come about on the recommendations of a group of ministers (GoM) that had taken Kargil Committee suggestions into account.
NRC project is currently being taken up in Assam to mark illegal Bangladeshi migrants and deport them.
As reported by the dna earlier, the RGI division flagged the security concerns vis-à-vis Aadhar card enrolment and various anomalies in bio-metric data capture by its registrars in Wednesday's review meeting.
Sources said that the revival of national identity card (NIC) scheme would also lead to getting back to the basics and issuance of national identification number (NIN) for citizens only instead of generating Aadhar that takes all residents living in India into account and issues card based on unique identity number.
In comparison to Aadhar, the bio-metric data captured by the NPR through a responsible chain of government officials is considered to be more scientific, elaborate and secure. Against five parameters recorded by Aadhar registrars, the NPR captures 16 parameters and has more sound and secure system of recording and safekeeping the data.
Following various complaints of issuance of duplicate Aadhar cards, the home ministry during the tenure of UPA-II government had asked the Intelligence Bureau to do a security audit of the processes followed by Nandan Nilekani led unique identification authority of India (UIDAI).
The decision taken on Wednesday could lead to UIDAI role getting restricted to its original mandate of doing de-duplication and generating a unique number of each citizen. As the UIDAI already has the wherewithal and technique to do it, it may be allowed to function with restricted mandate.
What about the data that has already been captured by Aadhar after spending a whopping sum of Rs 3,500 crore?
Sources said there is possibility of merging it with the NPR data but the RGI may have to vet it again and in some cases re-capture bio-metrics as it had reported several anomalies.
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