Delivery delays hit UID numbers

Only 3 crore of the 10 crore IDs dispatched, authority blames postal dept. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 18, 2012, 01:40:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Nandan Nilekani headed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has promised quick delivery of your Unique Identification (UID) or Aadhaar number. But, that is not happening and UIDAI has blamed the postal department for the delay.

The Aadhaar number, which should have reached the person enrolled in a month, is taking up to three months or even more.

"The postal department does not have adequate capacity in its printing centers in Delhi and Kolkata to print and dispatch Aadhaar letters as promised," a senior UIDAI official explained.

The department has been able to print just 1.5 lakh letters a day against daily enrolment of 10 lakh residents. As a result of the delay, just three crore Aadhaar numbers of the 10 crore generated so far has been dispatched. The UIDAI has recorded biometric details of 17 crore resident of its 20 crore target for enrollment by March 2012.

Slow delivery of letters is not the only problem. The postal has not been able to ensure that many Aadhaar letters reach the right person as in several cases the address mentioned in the letter was found to be incorrect. Although UIDAI has asked the postal department to trace the new address of Aadhaar holder, the department officials say finding the new address is turning out to be a difficult task.

To end the delay, the UIDAI has decided that another government body, Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) will print Aadhaar letters and supply it to postal department for mailing them to residents.

“TCIL will be printing minimum of about seven to 10 lakh Aadhaar cards in a day,” a UIDAI official said. In addition to their Mumbai facility, TCIL would be setting up two more printing units to meet the demand.

The UIDAI will also be providing an alternative platform to receive Aadhaar letters --- download from its website within month of enrolment.

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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