Government fast tracks Aadhaar process

Registration to take just half-an-hour; the UIDAI promises to deliver letters within 45 days. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 2, 2012, 01:23:26 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Nandan Nilekani-led Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will initiate enrolment of 40 crore Indians from this month, which the authority promises to be a smoother and faster process.

A person would be able to enrol at the UIDAI registrar in half-an-hour and the authority wants to deliver the Aadhaar letter in less than 45 days after successful enrolment. This has been done by smoothing the entire registration, enrolment and unique identification or Aadhaar number generation process.

"We have brought changes at three levels," director general of UIDAI RS Sharma told HT. They are at the time of enrolment, when the information packets are uploaded for generating numbers and at the time of issuing the letters.

To ensure that the Aadhaar number reaches the resident in time, the UIDAI will be asking all private enrollers to scan the documents of proof of residence and sent to the authority’s database in Bangalore. “Even if the address is wrong on the registration form there will be a way to cross check the address of undelivered Aadhaar letters,” Sharma said.

In the first leg of issuing 20 crore unique identification or Aadhaar numbers, around five lakh letters were undelivered. It was primarily insufficient or wrong address at the time of registr ation, resulting in people not getting their Aadhaar numbers even eight months after enrolment. An average time to get an Aadhaar letter was four months. The UIDAI has a mandate by the Cabinet for enrolment of 40 crore more in the next 18 months and the process for the same will start from Monday. “We have called a meeting of all private partners on April 3 to train them about the changes made,” Sharma said.

Although the authority had decided to continue the introducer concept for people, who don’t have any documents as proof of residence, its application will be much more stringent. “Introducer will be allowed for only those who don’t have any sort of residential proof,” a senior UIDAI official said, terming the concept a key for inclusive identity regime.

The government has decided to split the population between the UIDAI and home ministry’s census commissioner, who will conduct the final sweep to provide Aadhaar numbers to the uncovered ones. “We (UIDAI and Census Commissioner) have decided to work in close tandem so that the entire exercise is completed within the mandated timeframe,” the official said.

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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