Union home minister Amit Shah on Monday mooted the idea of a single multipurpose identity card for all utilities like Aadhaar, passport, driving licence, voter card and bank accounts.
After laying the foundation stone of a new building of the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner in New Delhi, Shah also said a mobile app will be used for the Census in 2021.
It will be a transformation from paper census to digital census, said Shah.
Mediareports quoted Shah as saying on the sidelines of the event, “We can have just one card for all utilities like Aadhaaar, passport, bank account, driving licence and voter card. This is a potential.”
He also announced that the central government would spend Rs 12,000 crore on the Census in 2021 as well as the preparation of the National Population Register (NPR).
Also read: Mamata raises Assam NRC issue with Amit Shah
Shah, who is also the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president, said there should be a system that as soon as a person dies, the information is updated automatically in the population data.
He announced that the Centre has decided to prepare an NPR by September 2020 and it will be a foundation for rolling out a citizens’ register across the country.
Also read: Exercise to update population register will exclude Assam
The NPR, after completion, is likely to lay the basis for a pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise on the lines of the one carried out in Assam.
The final list of NRC for Assam was published on August 31, 2019.
A total of 3,30,27,661 people applied for inclusion of their names in the updated NRC but names of over 3.11 people were included.
The reports further quoted union home minister Shah as saying: “Population census is an exercise that helps to provide people the benefits of the government schemes.”
The union home minister was also of the opinion that the National Population Register (NPR) would help the government in solving several issues of the country.