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ShareNew Delhi: Contrary to its name, the much-touted Unique Identification (UID) project is less about identifying all Indians and tracking illegal immigrants, and more about serving as a common link for various e-governance services and monitoring the implementation of different welfare schemes.
The closest India will get to an identification project is the National Population Register (NPR), to be set up by the home ministry, which is coming out with its own Multi-Purpose Nation Identity Card. A senior home ministry official said that under the present scheme of things, the UID is not envisaged as an identification scheme whereas the NPR is an identification project to be based on house-to-house enumeration.
Till date, India's various identification schemes have been residence- and not citizen-specific. "Both the UID and the National Identity Card will only provide proof of residence and not citizenship," the official said. Any person who has lived continuously in an area for over a year will be eligible for the card.
The home minister believes that the issue of citizenship will prop up once the card is ready. And while NPR will help identify outsiders in future census operations, there is no way to identify existing illegal immigrants. Future entries into NPR would take place after verifying citizenship.
Neither UID nor NPR would confer citizenship rights. Once the national I-cards are ready, different colours would be used to differentiate between non-resident and illegal migrants, he said.
Authorities in the home ministry and the Planning Commission, admit to confusion. "Issues regarding the roles and responsibilities of the Registrar General of India and UID authorities on the maintenance and upgradation of database are still unresolved," a source said.
