To weed out illegal immigrants, government plans to issue I-cards for Indians and foreign nationals
George Iype in New Delhi
In a move to weed out illegal immigrants and infiltration into the country, the Inder Kumar Gujral government plans to introduce two types of identity cards: Green cards for all Indian citizens and red cards for foreign nationals within the country.
The proposal, mooted by Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, will come up for
discussion at Cabinet next week.
Ministry sources said the plan to issue separate identity cards for Indians and foreigners is being formulated after conducting a country wide police survey which revealed one out of every 10 Indian citizens in the country is a foreign national.
The survey stated that about 10 million foreign nationals live illegally in India. Most of them come from Bangladesh and entered India through the porous Indo-Bangla border aided by corrupt officials.
"Introduction of green and red cards will not be of much help to identify those illegal immigrants who are already staying in India. But our effort is to prevent further infiltration in the border areas," a senior ministry official told Rediff On The NeT.
The cards will be modelled on the lines of the voter identity cards issued by the Election Commission. The Commission, which has already provided identity cards to more than 60 per cent of India's 540 million voters, is still continuing the gigantic exercise across the country.
The home ministry's move to provide identity cards to Indian citizens and foreign nationals is not a new venture. The idea was first mooted by then home minister S B Chavan in 1994. Chavan had recommended that the cards should be first issued in sensitive border areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
But the proposal had to be dropped after a government committee estimated that the scheme would cost the exchequer more than Rs 14 billion.
The Gujral government will place the onus of funding the scheme on the state governments. Home ministry sources said Gupta has already written to the state chief ministers asking for their opinions on the scheme.
According to Gupta's letter, the cards will be bar-coded along the lines of commodities utilising the latest technology developed by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay. The codes would incorporate information about an Indian citizen or a visitor from abroad allowing easy access to the data.
Gupta has also asked the states to take effective steps to check the illegal entry of foreign nationals. If the trend is allowed to go unchecked, the minister warned the day is not far when these illegal immigrants would demand a separate state.
Considering the financial liability involved, senior home ministry officials are not sure whether the state governments will approve of the scheme.
Moreover, the move is bound to be politically sensitive as illegal immigrants provide solid vote banks for political parties across the country. Unless there is an all party consensus, the card scheme might not take off.
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