At a time when Home Ministry and Planning Commission are at loggerheads over carrying out bio-metric collections for the Unique Identification Number project, BJP on Saturday demanded that the mandate of the UIDAI's ambitious scheme should not be extended without addressing national security concerns.
However, the party said by raising security concerns over the UID project, it was not siding with P. Chidambaram in the ongoing battle between the Home Ministry and the Planning Commission.
"Security concerns are more important than the Home Minister...we want to know by what time the National Population Register will be ready," party chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.
He said the insistence by the Planning Commission to enroll identities beyond its initial mandate of 20 crore to ensure benefit of welfare programmes to the right beneficiary raises ‘disturbing questions.’
"Can the issue of development be divorced from securities issues? Welfare programmes are financed from tax payers' money. Why should it go to those who have got no legal status to stay in India? There are already reports that in many parts of the country including North–East, illegal immigrants have manipulated documents to corner benefits meant for the poor as also voting rights," he said.
Prasad said in this light the turf war between the Planning Commission and the Home Ministry on such a sensitive issue was ‘very unfortunate.’
He said even the Parliamentary Standing committee on Finance had recently criticised the UID Bill that in substance gives statutory status to the UIDAI "which means overlapping with the National Population Register (NPR) which is also engaged in collection of biometric data."