The National Identity Card Project aimed at issuing secure biometric national IDs to eligible citizens by December 2014 has deferred the deadline by a year.
The National Identity Card Project aimed at issuing secure biometric national IDs to eligible citizens by December 2014 has deferred the deadline by a year.
The National ID Card Management Centre has revised the deadline to December 2015, its Executive Director Tulshi Gautam said.
With the halting of the former global tender, the centre needs to invite new tenders, lingering the wait for the cards to another one-and-a-half years.
The proposed ID aims to replace the existing citizenship card and will have personal information such as family name, given name, address, father’s name, mother’s name, photo and four fingerprints of both thumbs and two index fingers.
The first global bidding process for issuing 110,000 cards by December-end could not materialise after the Asian Development Bank, which is investing US$ 8 million for the project, asked the centre to scrap the tender citing a conflict of interest between the two final bidders and the consultant that prepared the tender document.
Two firms—SAFRAN Morpho of France and Gemalto of Finland—had been selected and were competing for the final financial evaluation. But since the consultant was a former employee of one of the selected bidders, ADB found it objectionable and asked the government to scrap the bid. However, the process is yet to gather pace.
“I am going to write to the Ministry of Home Affairs to cancel the bid and assign authorities to initiate a new bidding process by seeking ADB’s nod as soon as possible. We will ask for ADB’s permission to fulfil these criteria by Wednesday,” said Gautam. “As soon as we get approval from the ministry, we will cancel the former bidding process and start a new one.”
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