The British High Commission is set to introduce biometric data collection procedure from Wednesday to check cases of identity fraud.
"The biometric data collection system is in place in more than 120 countries. We will start it in India from Wednesday," deputy high commissioner Creon Butler said.
The new system will help keep the identity of a person through the finger prints, photograph along with his address. "If a person tries to fake his identity, he can be caught on the basis of finger print," Butler said.
The processing of biometric data will take about four days as it will be sent to the UK for clearance. "India's Telecommunication Act restricts encryption of the data at various levels and sending it through Internet. So we will download the data in a pen drive and send it physically to UK for clearance," he said.
The British High Commission is in talks with the Indian government to sort out the problem. "We have taken up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Telecommunications to find a solution to the problem," Chris Dix, director, visa services, South Asia, told PTI.
The new system will be in place at all the visa application centres in India, operated by UK visa's commercial partner, VFS Global. The centres are in 12 cities -- Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jalandhar, Kolkata, Mumbai (north and south) and Pune.
