To check delays, Aadhar no will be sent by SMS

Your mobile number will now be a new instrument to get your unique identification or Aadhaar number provided the number was provided at the time of enrollment. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 9, 2012, 01:54:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Faced with complaints of long delays in getting the Aadhaar number, the Nandan Nilekani-led Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is speeding up the delivery process using the mobile phone.

UIDAI has successfully tested a new application which allows sending Aadhaar numbers through a short message service (sms).

Complaints have been piling up over the delay in getting the Aadhaar number. JR Gupta of Conferderation of Senior Citizens Association of India said that people were not receiving Aadhaar numbers even eight months after enrollment.

HT had also received a large number of complaints from its readers regarding delay in getting Aadhaar numbers. Of the 16 crore Aadhaar numbers generated only 9.5 crore have been dispatched. The UIDAI plans to dispatch all Aadhaar letters by June end.

Admitting to the delay, a senior UIDAI official said the mobile based application will help in faster delivery of Aadhaar numbers. "Even if the letter takes time, the person will have an Aadhaar number for availing government services," the official, who was not willing to be quoted, said.

The UIDAI has tied up with the Central Government’s Department of Information Technology to have a lease line for delivering Aadhaar numbers on mobile. But, only those who had given their mobile numbers at the time of enrollment can avail this service.

The UIDAI during review of its first phase of enrollment of 20 crore people had found that only 27 % of the applicants had given their mobile numbers. The number is low considering that around 40 % of Indians have mobile.

“Those who don’t have mobile phones can give number of any of their family member,” an official said.

“We will also create awareness about benefits of providing mobile number during application”.

According to UIDAI officials, provide mobile number will have another benefit. It will help in authentication of a person seeking a public service such as opening a bank account or applying for a ration card.

“In case the biometric authentication does not work, the additional details as mobile number can help in authenticating identification,” the official said.

To overcome the problem of one changing his or her mobile number, the UIDAI has decided that the mobile numbers can be updated at the permanent enrollment centres to be set up in the second phase starting from end of April.

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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