By the end of 2017, persons with disabilities in the country will have their own multi-purpose identity card giving details about their identification and disability. This is aimed at ensuring that they are not left out from the Government’s welfare policies.
As per the Census 2011, there are 2.68 crore people with disability in the country. However, officials admit that the number could be more as many do not come out to be counted because of stigma or unawareness.
“The e-card with QR code is meant to ensure that benefits such as jobs and pensions reach the targeted beneficiaries weeding out corruption. Presently, these is no system to track the physical and social progress of a disabled person, the number of schemes availed by them or the schemes delivered by the delivery agencies,” said a senior official from the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disability under the Ministry.
The DEPD is executing the project to be launched in a phased manner where people with disability of all types and extent will be issued the card. Once actual number is available, the Centre and State Governments hope to frame policies accordingly.
The pilot project is proposed to be kicked off from March from Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh. “Depending on the results and learning lessons from it, the project will cover eleven states in the second phase and rest in the last phase by 2017,” the official said.
The project envisages setting up a national database of the sector in all States and union territories.
“The need for e-card has been felt to plug loopholes existing in the system. For example, there have been cases of duplicate and fraudulent disability certificates that are being issued, denying benefits to the rightful beneficiary.
“Also, the data is currently mostly available in manual registers in most of the States which has been found to be non-uniform, non-standardised, non-homogenous and non-interoperable,” the official explained. At present, it is the disability certificates issued by the States which is their identity.
Moreover, the information is missing in the disability certificate for availing schemes which requires attaching more documents for availing benefits.
The project intends to build a holistic end-to-end integrated system for issuance of universal ID for differently-abled with their identification and disability details, the official said.