Number of Delhiites enrolled for Aadhaar more than city population

The number of people who have registered for an Aadhaar identification number in the Capital outstrips its population by over 27%, raising questions about the efficacy of the controversial biometric registration process.

Updated on: Mar 19, 2015, 08:06:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The number of people who have registered for an Aadhaar identification number in the Capital outstrips its population by over 27%, raising questions about the efficacy of the controversial biometric registration process.

About 20 million people have enrolled in Delhi for the unique 16-digit number, 27.6% more than the city’s population of 16.8 million, according to the 2011 census.

Officials associated with the enrollment process, however, said it was robust — based on documents provided by government agencies like transport department, post offices and civil supplies department — and added they couldn’t vouch for census data.

“It is not abnormal. It is possible people who have enrolled in Delhi left the city but didn’t get their residence address changed,” said Vijay Maidan, director general of the Unique Identification Authority of India.

“Moreover, Delhi’s population has also increased since 2011,” Maidan added. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is the nodal body for rolling out Aadhaar in the country.

Of the 20 million enrolled, the UIDAI has generated about 17.7 million unique numbers in Delhi till Thursday, about a million more than the city population.

Around 793 million Aadhaar numbers have been generated so far across the country with the UIDAI mandated to cover the entire population by June.

A Census official, however, countered the argument made by Aadhaar authorities and said census figures couldn’t be compared with UIDAI numbers because it adopted a different enrollment process.

“For example, someone living in Gurgaon can enroll in Delhi with a local address in the absence of a verification process by UIDAI. In contrast, the census exercise only counts people who are ordinarily living in a particular area,” the official said. He added any question on the quality of the census or Aadhaar figures could only be raised after the entire population was covered.

But the controversy doesn’t end there. When Aadhaar numbers generated for people above 18 years of age – who are also eligible to vote – were compared with the election commission’s database as of January 1 2015, HT found 800,000 more people with the unique identification code than the city’s voter base. Maidan, however, said it could be because people who migrated out of Delhi didn’t get their addresses changed on the UIDAI database.

The identification project, one of the previous UPA government’s flagship programmes, has been riddled with controversies with the Supreme Court repeatedly asking the Centre to not make Aadhaar mandatory and a bunch of petitions against the disputed biometric data collection process.

Security agencies in the past have also raised doubts over the UIDAI’s enrollment process, saying people were getting Aadhaar numbers -- required for opening bank accounts and getting government entitlements such as cooking gas subsidy -- without any verification. One can register for an Aadhaar number by submitting a driving licence, voter identity card, any card issued by the department of posts or a photo ration card, which is proof of both residence and identity. The authenticity of the documents submitted isn’t validated by the UIDAI.

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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