Rules flouted, UIDAI set to change

The UIDAI has decided to simplify biometric collection process after it found that some private agencies avoided taking certain details of citizens to save time.

Updated on: Apr 6, 2012, 03:20:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UIDAI has decided to simplify biometric collection process after it found that some private agencies avoided taking certain details of citizens to save time.

As per the protocol, the agencies are required to take two biometric details – three impressions of 10 fingers and iris scan – and four photographs of a person. A review of the enrollment of 20 crore people in the first phase has revealed how the agencies have flouted the protocol by not collecting all required details.

"It can lead to problems when the UIDAI launches its authentication service," the authority’s director general RS Sharma told a meeting of enrollment agencies Tuesday. To reduce errors, he said only one photograph, one impression of 10 fingers and one iris scan of a person will be taken from the next phase starting from April end.

An agency in Jharkhand claimed that it could not capture well the fingerprints of people in a village. It could provide only iris details to generate Aadhar number of around 200 residents.

“There is a provision in the UID guidelines to avoid taking one of the biometric details, either finger prints or iris detail, if it is of poor quality or not available. It is called forced capturing,” said a UIDAI official. However, he said, it could be done only in exceptional cases and the reason for the same should be provided.

A few agencies seemed to have misused this provision to speed up the process. A private agency gets up to Rs. 50 for each successful Aadhaar number generation. It also came to the notice of the UIDAI that some agencies showed physically-fit people without their hands to avoid taking fingerprints.

“In cases where the agency claims that a person does not have fingers, his photograph showing hands should be produced as evidence,” Sharma said. But some photographs, according to him, revealed that the agencies has played truant.

Some agencies also undermined the UIDAI’s high-quality software, the review has revealed. They took two or three pictures of a person as against the mandatory four.

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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