Govt to plug loopholes along the seas

With its focus on ramping up security along India’s 7,600-km-long coastline, the home ministry on Monday insisted that the project to compile a database of 1.2 crore people living in coastal areas would be completed by April this year.

With its focus on ramping up security along India’s 7,600-km-long coastline, the home ministry on Monday insisted that the project to compile a database of 1.2 crore people living in coastal areas would be completed by April this year.

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The National Population Register (NPR) for coastal areas project, which would cover ten-times the number of people covered by the Multi-Purpose National Identity Card (MNIC) pilot launched in 2003, would be completed by April, Minister of State in the home ministry Ajay Maken said.

The identity scheme covering 3,331 coastal villages was launched in July last year in view of the Mumbai terror attacks where Pakistani terrorists entered the country through sea.

“It’s time we treated the coastline as an international border and created a database of people living in these areas as is done in case of land borders,” a home ministry official said.

As part of this exercise, Maken said the government would issue identity cards to the fishermen who figure in the NPR once the local revenue officer certifies that they have been living in the area for at least six months.