The National Population Register (NPR) under the Registrar General of India, which is competing with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for getting the rights for full enrolment (collection of data) of the population for issuing unique identification numbers, has set a target of December 2012 for completing the task, five years earlier than UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani’s deadline.
For the NPR, the task is easier than UIADAI. The former has already collected the citizen’s basic data in the first round it undertook this year along with the Census.
What remains to be done are the citizen’s biometric and iris scans. With just 2,500 equipment, NPR has covered 7.5 million citizens so far. It would need another 20,000 instruments to cover the entire population.
While work on demographic data digitization and capture of biometric data for 13 coastal states/union territories, Manipur, Nagaland and Delhi has been entrusted to a consortium of public sector undertakings comprising Bharat Electronics, Electronics Corporation of India and ITI Ltd, the rest of the country is being covered by the Department of Information Technology (DIT).
DIT would undertake the manual data entry, biometric enrolment, consolidation of both data and deliver it to the Registrar General of India for further de-duplication and assigning of UID numbers.
| HOW THEY COMPARE |
| NATIONAL POPULATION REGISTER Data collected so far: 7.5 million people UID numbers issued: 150,000 Main partners: Central PSUs: Coastal districts, Nagaland,Manipur, Delhi and UTs Department of Information Technology: Other states Deadline for countrywide biometric scan: December 2012 |
| UNIQUE IDENTIFICATION AUTHORITY OF INDIA Data collected so far: 140 million people UID numbers issued: 70 million Main partners All states Deadline for country-wide data collection and issual of numbers: 2017 |
DIT has nominated the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (formerly, DOEACC Society) as its nodal implementing agency for executing the NPR project.
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Work for biometric enrolment would start in February and conclude in December 2012, NPR sources said. NPR enrolment was underway in 44 districts currently, officials said.
The Cabinet Committee on UIDAI is expected to decide the future course of action on enrolment. The deputy chairman of the Planning Commission had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying he could consider four options: A model of multiple registrars who don’t get paid by anyone, changing rules to allow NPR to accept data collected by outside agencies, to stop NPR from taking biometric data, and lastly, to let it do the entire enrolment after UID completes its allotted share of 200 million enrolments.
According to NPR sources, the first won’t work as registrar agencies like banks, phone companies and gas agencies would not be interested in enrolling people without an incentive.
“Which bank would go inside villages to enrol people if they are not its customers?,” asks an official.
States won’t get volunteers to conduct enrolments if there is no money involved, they point out.
The proposal is currently with the PM and the Cabinet committee on UIDAI is expected to take a decision on who should ultimately do the job.