The capture of biometrics for National Population Register in the country has started in one district each in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. This was revealed in a statement issued by Home Minister P Chidambaram who said the process is already in progress in Delhi, Manipur and Nagaland and in one district each of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa, Puducherry and West Bengal.

Interestingly, the Home Minister broke the practice of holding his monthly press conference to brief the activities of his Ministry and just circulated the report card to the journalists through email on Tuesday. Ever since he took charge of the Home Ministry in December 2008, Chidambaram has been holding the press conference regularly, mostly on the 1st day of every month, to highlight the achievements of his ministry.

Chidambaram, along with his cabinet colleagues Kapil Sibal and Pawan Kumar Bansal, had addressed a press conference on Monday giving government's stand on Lokpal Bill and the all party meeting convened to discuss the issue.

The Home Minister, in his report, also admitted that a lot of his time was taken up by the meetings of the Joint Drafting Committee of the Lokpal Bill.

"The month was dominated by protests by certain sections of civil society. Through the month, a lot of my time was taken in the meetings of the Joint Drafting Committee of the Lokpal Bill. That exercise came to an end on June 21, 2011," he said. (More) PTI ACB

Chidambaram said the past month also witnessed an attempt by Baba Ramdev to convert a yoga shivir (camp) into a fast-unto-death programme. "Delhi Police cancelled the permission granted to hold a yoga shivir and were obliged to remove Shri Ramdev from Delhi," he said.

The Home Minister said the Ministry sanctioned Rs 192.76 crore for construction of infrastructure for establishment of a Reserve Battalion of CISF at his Parliamentary constituency Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu.

He said Rs 72.67 crore have been sanctioned to Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal under Special Infrastructure Scheme (SIS) for the year 2011-12.

Rs 7.92 crore were sanctioned to Central Armed Police Forces deployed in LWE-affected states for carrying out programmes under Civic Action Plan for this fiscal.

Approval amounting to Rs 4.40 crore was given to Uttar Pradesh under the SRE scheme for security related expenditure and an advance of Rs 1.10 crore was released to the state.

Chidambaram said an amount of Rs 14.87 crore under SRE was reimbursed to Jammu and Kashmir. The Home Minister said integrated on-line visa application system under the mission mode project on IVFRT (Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking) has been introduced in Wellington under the High Commission of India, New Zealand.