THE High Commission of India has announced that all Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) applications in Canada have to be submitted in person at BLS Centres “as biometrics have to be provided.”

OCI applications by post will not be accepted.

The OCI scheme was introduced in 2005.

According to the Government of Canada’s website cyber.gc.ca, biometrics can be captured in a number of ways. Some of the main examples include:

• Fingerprint scanners measure electrical currents or emit ultrasounds that reflect the pattern of your fingerprint
• Facial recognition systems take a photo of your face and compare it to known images of you
• Iris recognition systems take an image of your eye using infrared light and compare it to documentation of your iris
• Vein pattern recognition systems emit infrared light through a scanner to create an image of the veins inside your hand
• Speaker recognition systems analyze a combination of the acoustics in your voice with additional individual characteristics like accent, rhythm, or vocabulary
• A gait recognition system uses cameras to monitor and analyze your movements (such as the stride and cadence of your walk) to verify your identity