UIDAI to be fully independent

Nandan Nilekani-headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) mandated to issue unique IDs or Aadhaar cards to every resident in India will get full "functional autonomy", but its future role in enrolment will be decided by the Union cabinet later this month.

Updated on: Oct 12, 2011, 01:23:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Nandan Nilekani-headed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) mandated to issue unique IDs or Aadhaar cards to every resident in India will get full "functional autonomy", but its future role in enrolment will be decided by the Union cabinet later this month.

Planning Commission's deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia is expected to inform the finance ministry on Wednesday that it is willing to delegate all powers to the authority and it should have full "autonomy" without any panel's monitoring.

Plan panel member secretary Sudha Pillai had raised doubts over the UIDAI's functioning and asked the finance ministry to allow the panel to monitor the authority. The authority is an attached office of the Planning Commission, required to seek financial approvals for it from the government.

"I am fully backing UIDAI on autonomy," Ahluwalia said, when asked about Pillai's letter to the ministry, but added that concerns raised by her were genuine as the panel's secretary.

The panel now wants that an official in UIDAI should be held responsible, if an agency points out lapses, instead of the Planning Commission.

The official in UIDAI to be made responsible will be decided on Wednesday at a meeting between Ahluwalia and expenditure secretary Sumit Bose.

"If there is subsequent questioning of any expenditure, the responsibility must stop at the official there (in UIDAI)," he said, in a bid to end the conflict. It will mean the plan panel will have no role in the UIDAI's functioning.

On the issue of duplication of work between UIDAI and census commissioner on enrolment of residents for Aadhar, the plan panel wants the commissioner to use the biometric data generated by the authority to issue Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards.

The census commissioner expressed inability to use UIDAI data, citing security concerns as private vendors were enrolling people and rules under the Citizenship Act 1955.

Earlier, the cabinet committee on UIDAI wanted both the organisations to collect biometric data on a platform, which could be used by them.

The plan panel is expected to circulate a cabinet note on the issue of duplication in the cabinet committee by the end of this week.

The panel wants the census commission to change its rule, so that it can use the biometric data generated by 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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