New Delhi: The Law Ministry has proposed a multipurpose national identity card with a unique tracking number in order to avoid the difficulties in the head count of electorate in view of sizeable migration.
According to the minister, it was the mission of Election Commission to tag every eligible Indian with a voter identity card.
Till January 1, 2005, there were still more than 20 crore eligible Indians who have not yet been issued Election Photo Identity Cards (EPIC).
There are 680,508,403 eligible voters of which 478,251,225 have been issued the voter's I-card, accounting for 69.87 per cent of the electorate. The remaining yet to get the voter's I-cards.
"This is partly because of additions to the rolls during annual revisions and due to large scale intra-city and inter-city migration," the ministry told PTI.
Despite campaigns stretched beyond the stipulated timeframe to achieve 100 per cent EPIC coverage, the 30 per cent figure has refused to come down.
"The migrating electors, in most cases, do not mention their EPICs, if any, issued in the place of previous residence in the application filed for inclusion of their name in the new electoral roll," it added.
The ministry also said: "A unique multi-purpose identity card is the need of the day. A national identity card can then cover various activities, including that of identification in an electoral roll."
The citizens could also use the unique multipurpose card as an all-purpose card for identification, proof of residence, citizenship, date of birth, etc., the ministry added.
"Therefore, though the name is included in the part of the roll where elector shifts, the EPIC number remains blank. This is a major area of concern," it said, adding issuing a unique number to elector for lifetime can solve this problem.
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