Tamil Nadu to have biometric ration cards

CHENNAI: The TN food department is working on a biometric system to weed out bogus and duplicate ration cards. The biometric card, to be introduced in June 2011, will have photos, prints of all fingers and high-resolution images of the iris (pattern-recognition techniques are used to identify high-resolution images of the iris, which is unique to every individual) of all persons listed in the card.

Going by the number of cards in use, the exercise is expected to cover close to two crore families. Now, the card carries only the photo of the family head.  To avoid duplication of work, the food department is thinking of working on biometric identification along with the census department, which will collect household data in May-June for updating the population registry.