Home Minister Thapa inaugurates first distribution of national identity card

Phidim, Panchthar, Nov 19 : Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa today inaugurated the first distribution of national identity card from Panchthar district by handing it to 101-year-old Bhagawati Devi Bhandari of Phidim Municipality-4, amid a programme.
On the occasion, Bhandari received national identity card from the Home Minister first and later she handed over his national identity card to the Home Minister as a symbol of respect.
Speaking at the event, Minister Thapa said the national identity card links to the establishment of good governance, stability and prosperity of the country.
“It will be difficult to find out what ingredients are needed to develop a country unless there is integrated information system. Country’s development will be accelerated by making a development plan based on database,” he said.
As the Home Minister says the national indentify card keeps a significant meaning in view of addressing the people’s aspirations for development, good governance, prosperity and stability. According to him, the process to distribute the national ID in all districts has begun and some difficulties have surfaced in the implementation of a new system.
On the occasion, Province 1 Chief Minister Sherdhan Rai said it was a matter of pride that the national ID distribution kicked off from the province. He was of the view that only the successful implementation of federalism would help meet the people’s aspirations.
Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs Prem Kumar Rai informed that the distribution of the national would start from all districts within two years.
Executive Director at the National Identity Management Centre , Deepak Kafle, shared that the national identity card distribution had started from Paanchthar district in all 77 districts of the country.
The government aims to distribute the machine readable card to all Nepali citizens within three years.
The national ID card consists of biometric information of the card holders as well as information on land, education, government services among others.
Local level units at all wards would e set up to expedite and streamline the distribution of the card. (RSS)