The Customs Department will be soon getting into the act of verifying the credentials (live biometric data) of resident and marine fisheries identities in coastal villages with the help of smart card-readers manufactured by the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL).
Officials of the Customs Preventive Division (CPD) at Kakinada have received three of those card-readers named Pramanika recently and are in the process of activating them as part of a pilot project with the help of Fisheries Department of Andhra Pradesh.
According to highly placed sources in the Customs Preventive Commissionerate based at Vijayawada, the card- readers will check the authenticity of Marine Fisheries Identity Cards (MFID) issued by the State Fisheries Department on the basis of its database fed into the devices.
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The portable machines will also examine the veracity of resident ID cards recorded in the National Population Register (NPR). The card-readers have extensive applications in border control, law enforcement, public distribution system and other government schemes.
Instructions have been issued to launch the pilot project at the earliest after a top official in the anti-smuggling wing of the Central Board of Excise and Customs enquired about its progress a few days ago. Two card-readers have been handed over to the Kakinada CPD and the other one to the Kakinada Customs House.
The Customs Department does coastal patrolling in collaboration with the Coast Guard and State Marine Police. It is during such regular rounds of patrolling that the card-readers will be pressed into service.
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After the card-readers are successfully deployed, an indent will be placed for making such devices available at all eight Shore Guard Customs Preventive Units in the State.