ID cards for all ‘genuine’ Indians: Rajnath

NEW DELHI: Home minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday told Lok Sabha that the government would prepare a National Population Register (NPR) incorporating all genuine Indian citizens and issue them national identity cards in a time-bound manner. "We have to identify who is an Indian citizen and who is not. We have to take steps to identify genuine Indian citizens," Singh told Lok Sabha in reply to a question regarding infiltration along various borders and counter-measures taken by the government. "The NPR will be prepared in a time-bound manner. NPR will identify who is Indian citizen and who is not. All genuine Indian citizens will get a national identity card," he added. Elaborating on a recent meeting taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to synergize the NPR and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)'s Aadhaar exercise, Singh said the National Registration Authority and UIDAI would work in mutual cooperation to prepare a comprehensive NPR database. The PM's go-ahead to UIDAI to achieve a 100-crore enrolment target has ended the suspense over the fate of Aadhaar project under the new government. The UIDAI will now intensify enrolment in states like UP and Bihar. Meanwhile, the UIDAI Bill, which had been rejected by the parliamentary standing committee on finance headed by senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, will be revived and brought to Parliament for fresh approval. The NPR authorities, meanwhile, seem reconciled to accepting enrolment data largely from UIDAI, though a house-to-house verification may be undertaken to confirm the address of Aadhaar number holders. The NPR TIN will be matched with Aadhaar number and thereafter, biometric data will be taken from the UIDAI tech centre. Photos and other fields will ultimately be culled out for citizenship verification. TOI