Multipurpose National Identity Cards
From GovernIndia
On May 26th 2009, Home Minister P Chidambaram announced that the Government would issue Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC) to every citizen by 2011. This would be implemented under the Unique Identification Authority of India. A pilot project is already under way and the final implementation will be done based on the results of this pilot programme.
The project is now officially called Aadhaar. A strategy document for the project is available at [1]
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Implementation details
The identity cards will be in the form of smart cards, i.e. cards with a low-power embedded microprocessor. Recommendation for the card was made by a technical committee constituted by the Government and consisting of representatives from the National Informatics Center, IIT Kanpur, Bharat Electronics Limited, Indian Telephone Industries Limited, Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Information Bureau and others.
Considerations
- How costly will the scheme be?
- Technical capabilities of the smart cards.
- Privacy issues
- Security issues - how easy/difficult would it be to clone and misuse these identity cards
- What purposes would these identity cards serve?
- Will citizens always have to carry these cards on their person?
- What happens if a citizen loses his card?
- What happens if a citizen is found without a card?
- How will citizens originally be identified for issuance of a card?
- What purposes other than basic identification are these cards expected to serve?
Card Specifications
Sources
- National identity cards to be issued to all citizens - News report in the Times of India (May 26, 2009)
- Facial Scans not to be used for de-duplication