July 3, 2005
Iris ‘eye’ to identify bogus beneficiaries
For the first time in the country the Guntur administration is using iris recognition system in a welfare program. This system was adopted to identify beneficiaries in urban poor housing program.
Iris recognition is an effective means of keeping administrative control over welfare schemes distribution, observed collector G Jaya Lakshmi.”We are glam that this system identified a person who was trying to get two homes on the names of his two wives at Mangalagiri municipality,” she observed.
At Mangalagiri S Satyanarayana approached authorities with an application for a house under the scheme on his wife’s name. The iris camera identified that he had already submitted an application in the morning on his first wife Ganga Bhavani’s name. Similar case was also registered at Sangadigunta from one B Adaiah.
The collector and representatives of 4G Informatics of Hyderabad and Iridian Technologies Inc. New Gersey of USA today revealed the progress of their program who have jointly employed iris recognition solution for administrative control in the allocation of affordable homes in the district.
The district administration here has decided to make available the initial number of homes available under ‘Rajiv Gruha Kalpa’ with an enrollment process that incorporates iris recognition of applicant couples to prevent duplicate applications.
In the district while 8,793 houses were sanctioned 6,575 eligible applicants were identified of which 4,594 underwent the iris scan. The process is still going on in Guntur and Tenali, said Jaya Lakshmi.
This simple technology presently on practice for issuing ration cards captures and digitally encode an image of the irises of the applicants. Database storage of the encoded image allows the authorities to efficiently manage the identity of program participants, including other welfare programs available through the state.
“We are glad to deploy India’s first iris recognition based welfare scheme program,” observed 4G President and CEO Dr Sreeni Tripuraneni. He said in developing countries like India where in different Government Solutions organizations are spending lot of money on welfare schemes this technology establishes the true identity of an individual and ensures that the welfare schemes are reaching the real beneficiaries.
Tarvinder Sembhi of Iridian Technologies was pleased to supply the technology to ensure the Government Solutions programs reach the eligible people.
