UIDAI-Plan panel in a fresh row

Row between Nandan Nilekani led Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Planning Commission is not over with the former expressing its displeasure over allocation for the next financial year.

Updated on: Mar 5, 2012, 21:31:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Row between Nandan Nilekani led Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Planning Commission is not over with the former expressing its displeasure over allocation for the next financial year.

The Plan Panel had earlier objected to UIDAI’s move to collect biometric details of entire population saying it would lead to duplication of work as Home Ministry’s National Population Register (NPR) had a similar mandate.

The issue was resolved after a Cabinet Committee on UIDAI decided to split biometric collection of residents between the authority and NPR. After the Cabinet decision, plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia had claimed that both the organizations --- UIDAI and NPR --- will work together to implement the decision.

The UIDAI has now charged the plan panel of putting a financial barrier to meet the target of enrolling additional 40 crore people by June next year.

The root of the dispute was the Plan Panel’s decision to allocate just Rs 1,750 crore to UIDAI for the financial year 2012-13. The authority had sought Rs 3,250 crore to ensure that it would be able to enroll a million people every day.

In a recent communiqué to the panel, the UIDAI had argued that the Cabinet Committee this January had approved an additional Rs 5,791 crore for the UIDAI project up to March 2017 and therefore, it should get adequate money to implement the project.

The UIDAI says the project is of vital importance to India as the government plans to replace indirect fuel and food subsidy with direct cash transfer to unique identification or Aadhaar number linked bank account of beneficiaries. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is expected to announce a scheme in this regard in the budget.

The plan panel is, however, not willing to buy the argument and had stuck with its initial allocation of Rs 1,750 crore. It says, if required, the unique identification authority can seek additional funding during supplementary grants decided in the winter session of Parliament.

The project aimed at providing an Aadhaar number to each resident in India by June next year would cost Rs 8,814 to the government. Of this, an allocation of Rs 3,023 crore has already been made to 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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