Once there was a red card

In 2008, 69-year-old Mishro Devi became the first Indian to have a smart card issued by the Union government, proving her national identity. He says he never used the document but kept the “red card” as a souvenir.

Mishro and a few hundred residents of his village (Pooth Khurd in north-west Delhi’s Bawana area) were among the first few lakh people to be allotted Multi-Purpose National Identity Card (MNIC) by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) under a pilot project 17 years ago.

The card, which contained an embedded electronic chip, contained Mishro’s biometric details: 10 fingerprints, an iris scan, his photograph and his thumb print. It also had details like name, date of birth, names of parents, place of birth, place of issue and validity period of 10 years.

The issuing authority was the Registrar General of Citizens under the MHA, which determines citizenship in India. 12.88 lakh MNICs were distributed to citizens aged 18 years and above under the pilot project concluded on March 31, 2009. Biometric data of approximately 30 thousand people were seized.

The MHA, while replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on August 12 this year, did not specify the “valid categories of documents” required for people to prove citizenship in India. Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation MP Sudama Prasad had asked for the details.

Home Minister Nityanand Rai said in a written reply: “Indian citizenship is subject to the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the rules prescribed thereunder.” The response stated, without specifying acceptable documents, that citizenship “may be acquired by birth (Section 3), by descent (Section 4), by registration (Section 5), by naturalization (Section 6) or by incorporation of territories (Section 7).”

Determination of citizenship

The debate over citizenship and what documents are required to be called an Indian was reignited when the Election Commission of India (EC) decided to carry out a special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar in June this year. Apart from cleaning and updating voter rolls, one of the aims of this exercise was to weed out illegal immigrants, which is the MHA’s mandate.

As per the EC’s June 24 order to implement SIR in Bihar, currently being carried out in 12 other States and Union Territories, people can submit any of the 11 valid documents for inclusion in the electoral rolls. It was stated that residents whose parents’ names were included in the 2003 voter rolls, when the last SIR was implemented, could skip submitting documents. The list of acceptable documents included birth certificate, passport, education certificate but no Aadhaar card. Following petitions in the Supreme Court, the EC agreed to accept Aadhaar cards as well. Since citizenship is the MHA’s domain, Opposition parties have pointed to the EC’s authority to direct such a move in the name of cleaning the voter rolls.

In 2015, then Home Minister Kiren Rijiju informed Parliament that under the Citizenship Act, 1955, “the Central government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue them (a) National Identity Card”. Accordingly, he added, the government has decided to create the National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC/NRC) by verifying the citizenship status of all people in the National Population Register (NPR).

Update details of the NPR, which was to be conducted simultaneously with the first phase of the 2027 Census, have been put on hold. The citizenship of each individual will be determined individually during the preparation of the NRC, which is a subset of the NPR.

NPR has a database of 119 crore residents of the country. Unlike the Census, where statistical data down to the village level is made public, NPR data is collected on a household basis and can be shared with government agencies and States. NPR data was first collected in 2010 with the first phase of the 2011 Census. It was last updated in 2015.

The first phase of the census will be carried out between April and October 2026; Preliminary testing is currently running from November 10 to 30 across the country. Unlike previous examples, this time questions on the NPR are not asked or updated by enumerators during the pre-testing phase.

Updating of the NPR was suspended following the riots and violence in 2019-20 following the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) by Parliament on December 9, 2019. There were fears and apprehensions that the CAA, which granted citizenship to members of six undocumented non-Muslim communities who entered India on or before December 31, 2014, from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, would be followed by a nationwide CAA. Compilation of NRC will disenfranchise Muslims and undocumented Indians.

While it was thought that the CAA would come to the rescue of non-Muslims excluded from the NRC, the excluded Muslims would have to prove their citizenship. After the passage of the CAA, 83 people were killed in protests and riots in Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Meghalaya and Delhi from December 2019 to March 2020.

Although the Union government informed Parliament that “so far no decision has been taken to prepare the NRC at the national level” and denied that the CAA and the NRC were linked, the 2003 Citizenship Rules under the Citizenship Act, 1955, which made the process possible, were neither amended nor repealed. There is no need for new legislation to conduct the NRC. Assam is the only state where the NRC was compiled on the orders of the Supreme Court and the draft record excluded 19 lakh 3.29 crore applicants. owner

In 2013, the then United Progressive Alliance government informed Parliament that the NPR was a register of citizens as well as non-citizens. “The purpose of creating an NRC is to clarify all ordinary residents of the country at a particular time. The proposed resident ID (smart) cards will not be proof of citizenship and will carry a disclaimer that the card does not confer any citizenship rights. The citizenship of each individual will be determined individually at the time the NRC is prepared.”

But the idea of ​​a unique identification system dates back to 2001, when the then Home Minister LK Advani proposed the issue of MNIC. In a presentation made by the government at the meeting of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Home Affairs on 21 August 2003, the recommendation of a Group of Ministers to reform the National Security System was conveyed.

“Illegal immigration has reached serious levels. Compulsory registration of citizens and non-citizens living in India is required. This will facilitate the preparation of national citizen registers. All citizens should be issued an MNIC,” the statement said. It was also added that non-citizens should be given ID cards of different colors and patterns. The exercise was proposed to be started in the border areas or the 20 km border belt and gradually expanded to the rest of India.

One card as memory

Sitting in his three-storey house in Pooth Khurd, where he has lived since 1974, Mishro recalls being invited to a school in 2008 and how a government official congratulated him in front of the entire village. The road to his house is paved with concrete, but open sewers run on both sides.

When he was given the card, Mishro was told that he could use it to demand better social facilities. When asked what the card could be used for, he said, “I was told that this card can provide us with drinking water and is also proof of our citizenship. I did not use it anywhere. It was later canceled and replaced with an Aadhaar card.”

Mishro even kept the ceremonial banner, which resembled the card presented to him. “This is for future generations. Future generations should know that I was the first person to get this card,” he says.

Over the years, Aadhaar card issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has become ubiquitous with 100% saturation. The proposed NPR and pilot MNIC face uncertainty. A former MHA official who was involved in the pilot project said that the then government decided to prioritize Aadhaar over MNIC.

“We were told to hand over all the biometric data we collected during the pilot project to UIDAI. The biometric data was seeded with Aadhaar to prevent duplication,” the former official said.

The effectiveness of Aadhaar card is now being debated by the Union government. During the hearing in the Supreme Court, the EC stated that Aadhaar is only proof of identity and not citizenship. Mishro’s son Deepak Dabas, who works in a school, kept the MNIC wrapped in a plastic sheet along with other important documents in his almirah. “The whole family got the cards. I was young then. The village headman filled in our information and we only had to give our biometric information at a camp organized by the authorities. The government did not charge us any fee,” says Deepak, adding that he never used the card and knew it had no value.

Rajbir Dabas, another resident of Pooth Khurd, says he lost his card while shifting to a new house but used it to his advantage several times. “There was a prominent Ashoka emblem on the right side of the card and it said ‘Republic of India’. If you showed it to anyone they couldn’t tell what it was. I used it at the toll booths a few times to avoid paying taxes because the officials got scared every time we showed the red card. They thought we were from the Ministry.”

Rajbir Dabas from the same village used the card to evade toll tax. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

Bharpai, 67, another resident of the village, has a faint memory of MNIC. The woman, who struggles with age-related health problems, sits on the cot on the terrace of her two-storey house. When asked about the card, Bharpai, who is hearing impaired, said, “Yes, I got the card but I don’t remember where it is now. I never cared about its maintenance. I have my Aadhaar card with me.” He also says that he has never used it in his life.

At the panchayat bhavan, about 500 meters away, a group of men had gathered to play cards. When asked if they have MNIC, Rajesh, a resident of the area, says, “I have the card, but it is of no use. The electricity bill is more useful to us than this card. Since you are asking, maybe I will call. At that time, nearly 4 thousand people in this village got the card,” and adds that he also used this card to avoid paying tolls on the highways.

Mishro says he never thought of throwing away the card. “Are you throwing away the gift?” he says, and he hopes it can be useful to his children and grandchildren one day.

vijaita.singh@thehindu.co.in

Edited by Sunalini Mathew.