The paper presents three novel features for handwritten data based identity recognition. A novel framework for combining the features for identification is presented. The framework combines the features in kernel space in MKL based framework. The application of features individually and in combination is presented for writer recognition and signature verification. The writer recognition results have been presented for Devanagari script input and signature verification results have been presented for open dataset [1]. The experiments have shown encouraging results. © 2010 IEEE.