4 options before Cabinet to resolve UIDAI enrolment

The Planning Commission has proposed out four options including amending the law to allow Nandan Nilekani headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to enroll beyond its present mandate of 200 million and end differences between the authority and the Home Ministry.

Updated on: Nov 11, 2011, 24:10:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission has proposed out four options including amending the law to allow Nandan Nilekani headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to enroll beyond its present mandate of 200 million and end differences between the authority and the Home Ministry.

The ministrys Census commissioner had claimed that allowing UIDAI to collect biometric details would result in duplication of work as only it was authorized under the Citizenship Act of 1955 to collect the demographic information for creation of the National Population Register (NPR) of all residents.

The UIDAI had countered the claim saying that a Cabinet committee in 2008 had asked both organizations to work in coordination so that biometric details collected by either of them can be used by other.

The Census commissioner had refused to accept UIDAIs biometric data terming it unreliable in absence of verification of those enrolled. The NPR protocol details the process for verification through a public notice. The UIDAI enrolls residents on basis of prescribed documents and if introduced by a person having an Aadhaar number.

This issue remained unresolved at a meeting of a finance ministry committee, which restricted UIDAIs enrollment to 200 million people by March 2012, and left the final decision for the Cabinet.

Now, the plan panel has prepared a note for the Cabinets consideration with four options ---- amendment of the law to allow the commissioner and UIDAI to enroll, stop UIDAI from enrollment beyond 200 million, allow only commissioner to enroll and allow commissioner plus other government agencies such as banks to enroll.

But, the plan panel believes that allowing only the commissioner to enroll would delay linking government welfare schemes with unique identification (UID) or Aadhaar numbers.

The pace of enrolment of collection of bio-metric data by the Census commissioner has been very slow, a senior plan panel functionary told HT.

The government wants direct cash transfer of subsidies through Aadhaar based information technology platform for food, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas by end of 2012. It also intends to link disbursement of wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to Aadhaar linked bank accounts.

The government is already working on a set of recommendations made by Nilekani committee on Aadhaar-linked welfare measures to prevent leakages and to have bigger impact for socially and economically backward classes. Checking leakages will reduce the governments subsidy burden, a panel official said.

Top panel sources said panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia wants to push for amendment of the citizenship law to fasten the enrolment process but is expected to face resistance from the Home Ministry, which does not want any tampering with the law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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