KOZHIKODE: Loss of valuable documents, be it due to a natural calamity or for some other reason, is always a cause for concern. It hits tribal community extra hard as their access to public services gets limited severely. To address this, the Wayanad district administration launched the ambitious scheme ‘ABCD’ (Akshaya Big Campaign for Documents Digitalisation) targeting the tribal population in the district in November 2021. Under the scheme, all valid documents of the tribal residents were stored in DigiLocker, the Indian digitisation online service provided by the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
As many as 22,888 important documents, ranging from ration cards, Aadhaar cards, birth certificates, voter’s ID cards, bank papers, age certificate and health insurance cards, of the tribal population have been stored in DigiLocker upon the completion of the scheme. The district administration is now planning to include people from financially backward families in the next phase.
“Wayanad, which has the largest tribal population in the state, had been affected by severe natural calamities in recent years. Many citizens, including the tribal residents, lost valuable documents. Several people faced trouble in getting a duplicate copy. ABCD was launched to address the issue by digitising and storing the documents of the tribal population,” said District Collector A Geetha.
The implementation of the scheme began in November 2021. A total of 26 special camps were organised in various local bodies for collecting the documents from tribal families, digitising them and storing them in DigiLocker.
The programme was first implemented in Thavinjal panchayat. After its success, the scheme was expanded to all 23 panchayats and three municipalities in Wayanad.
Geetha said the project, first of its kind in the country, benefited 64,670 tribal residents. Kerala IT Mission, departments of local self-government, tribal, health and civil supplies, besides India Posts, Karunya Scheme, KSEB, BSNL, PWD, Nehru Yuva Kendra and district lead bank backed the scheme, Geetha said. IT mission, the implementing agency, executed the scheme with the support of Akshaya centres in the respective local bodies.