People's Democracy

Stop Biometric Enrolment

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on June 19, 2011.

THE office of the Director of Citizen Registration/Director of Census Operations, Delhi has initiated a biometric enrolment of all citizens for the database of the National Population Register. The instructions make it mandatory for all citizens to provide biometrics as part of the enrolment, including ten fingerprints and iris scan.

The Citzenship Act 1955 and the Citzenship Rules 2003 provide for mandatory registration of all citizens, but not biometric enrolment. There are several issues which need to be resolved before such an exercise can be undertaken, especially the legal safeguards against misuse and the delinking of social welfare schemes from this exercise, such as access to PDS and MNREGA.

These issues are expected to be discussed and resolved once the National Identification Authority of India Bill is finalized by the Parliamentary Standing Committee where it is presently pending. To embark upon the biometric enrolment bypassing parliamentary and legal sanction is entirely unacceptable.

The CPI(M) calls upon the government of India to stop this biometric enrolment immediately.