A Kerala IT solutions provider company has tied up with a US-based firm for implementing Iris technology, which photographs an individual's iris as an identification mark, for identifying voters and in cooperative banking.

The Kerala State Cooperative Institute of Information Technology Electronics & Communications (Costec) has entered into partnership with Access Shield International (ASI) in working out a pilot programme in Iris technology.

Iris technology is currently the most fool proof identification procedure and use a high resolution camera to click the eyes of an individual. The information about the patterns in the iris of an individual is stored in a data bank.

The information will help identify people during operating accounts and collecting government doles.

"The technology has been used to identify refugees in Afghanistan and is currently used in several organisations in the US. The biggest advantage is that once clicked the information is stored in a data bank and can be accessed at any time to identify any individual at the click of a mouse," said Kumar Kushal, CEO ASI.

E. Kunhiraman, chairman of Costec, said: "With a strong cooperative sector in the state, we expect that we can implement this new technology because it is believed to be very cost effective compared to other IT solutions. We are also working with the government to use finger printing attendance registers using the technology of ASI."

The technology would be used to ensure that an individual does not collect doles disbursed by banks and the government twice.

In Kerala the cooperative movement has now spread to almost all walks of life and currently there are 10,236 active cooperatives under the Registrar of Cooperatives and another 9,342 cooperative organisations in handloom, coir, fisheries and khadi industries.

The banking sector in the cooperatives achieved a staggering Rs.9.20 billion in the deposit mobilization campaign in the last fiscal.

ASI has operations in USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Finland.