The social justice ministry is all set to launch colour-coded unique identity card for registration of disabled persons as a legal document and for easy linkage to the government’s schemes and services on a centralised e-platform to issue Unique Disabled Identity (UDID) cards. The card will be marked by three different colours — red, blue and yellow to indicate the degree of disability. First UDID cards are likely to be delivered in August in Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, which is the chosen district for the pilot project. As of now, no national database on the disabled is available. Census 2011 puts the figure at 2.68 crore. This makes up for 2.23% of the population.

The UDID portal will be launched in the public domain in June for registration at the district level and the first cards are likely to be handed out to eligible persons in mid-August. The cards will be marked by a colour bar at one end. Red colour will indicate disability of 80% and above, blue for disability between 40% and 80% and yellow for disability below 40%. It has been designed by National School of Design, Ahmedabad. It will have a hologram meshed in to prevent any attempts at duplication.

All applicants will be certified after due verification by the CMO and only then the UDID will be generated. The cards will be issued from the central monitoring base in the department of empowerment of persons with disabilities. However, considering that everyone may not have access to the online platform, offline applications will also be accepted. The states that will be covered in the first phase include UP, Haryana, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Kerala, Tripura, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu. The remaining states will be covered by 2018.