Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday proposed the idea of a multipurpose identity card for citizens. The card could be an all in one resource for utilities like passport, Aadhaar, driving licence and bank accounts.
“We can have just one card for all utilities like Aadhaar, passport, bank account, driving licence, voter card. This is a potential,” Minister Shah said at an event organized to lay the stepping stone of the Janganana Bhawan, the office of the census authority, Delhi.
Centre took the move to strengthen the Digital India initiative further as Home Minister Amit Shah broached on getting the Census 2021 digital, with a mobile app to gather data.
“A mobile app will be used in Census 2021. It will be a transformation from paper census to digital census,” Shah added
Census 2021 is the sixteenth census in the country and eighth since Independence. Shah suggested bringing forth a system wherein if someone dies, the information is updated in the population data automatically.
According to Shah, the digital census has many benefits. If a child takes birth and does not die up to the age of 18, he or she would be able to vote automatically without applying for a voter id card.
Shah said that the National Population Register (NPR) is being prepared for the first time in the 2021 census and NPR will prove to be a game-changer in the country as it will help in solving several issues like law and order, gender equality.
Shah suggested that the Census team has already started developing an app that will act as a repository of the data collected from the citizens of the country.
The Centre is going to spend Rs 12,000 crores on the country’s first digital census, Amit Shah said.
The digital data collection will happen for the first time in 140 years. This will be done through an app which will be installed in the cell-phones of the representatives who go door-to-door to collect data
“A total of 33 lakh enumerators, the persons who conduct door-to-door counting, would be mobilised for data collection. The exercise is being done in 16 languages to facilitate people in filling their details properly,” Shah added.