PANCHTHAR: Bhagwati Devi Bhandari who was the first person to receive the National Identity Card, a federal level identification, has died at her residence in Shantipur, Phidim-4 on Friday. She was 102.

Bhandari had stopped eating for the past 12 days.

She was cremated on Friday itself at the bank of Tamor river which borders Panchthar and Tehrathum districts.

The National Identity Card was handed over to the senior citizen by Home Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa amidst a programme held on November 19, 2018.

The card was introduced to avoid the hassle of carrying various other documents of identification such as the citizenship card, driving license, land ownership certificate, among others for different uses.

However, the national identity card has not come into use yet due to the unavailability of chip reader machines used to read the card.