PMO advances deadline for UIDAI, NPR to finish work by March

Officials say it took them four years to collect biometrics of 700 million people and issue Aadhaar numbers. Now they have to do the same for the remaining 350-400 million residents in the next five months

The Prime Minister Office has asked the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the National Population Register (NPR) to finish collecting biometric details of citizens by March next year. Earlier, the deadline was June,2015.

The decision was taken in a meeting attended by all the stakeholders in the second week of October. A review meeting was held on Friday in the Planning Commission. Two officials, who independently spoke to Business Standard, confirmed that the deadline has been advanced for both the UIDAI and the NPR, a wing of the Union home ministry.

But the new deadline has alarmed the bureaucrats in both the departments, especially the UIDAI which is currently without a head. Nandan Nilekani quit as UIDAI chairman earlier this year to contest the Lok Sabha elections on a Congress ticket.

"The deadline is most likely to be missed. The NPR has not started much work of collecting biometric details in the North-eastern states, where as the UIDAI is still in the process of tendering for big states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar," said an officer. The tendering is done to empanel agencies, which will set up camps to enroll people.

Till October 28, a little over 700 million people have been issued Aadhaar, a 16-digit unique identification number. This number is generated after capturing an individual's biometric details such as fingerprints and facial reading. The government has authorised both the UIDAI and the NPR to collect biometric data, but in their respective states. Once the biometric detail is collected, it is sent to the UIDAI for de-duplication. The UIDAI then generates the Aadhaar number.

The project was launched in September 2010, and the authorities were asked to collect the data of all residents aged above five years. Population of such people is estimated to be around 1.05-1.08 billion. The question is whether the authorities can complete the task against the new timeline.

Officials in the NPR indicated that it would be difficult to complete work in Assam and Meghalaya, as they were busy creating the National Register of Citizens. The UIDAI, which was recently assigned Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Chattisgarh with a combined population of 340 million, has just begun work in these states. Till date, around 89.3 million residents have been issued Aadhaar in these states, which is 26 per cent of the target population.

Many say the decision to advance the deadline was taken in view of the government's intention to link Aadhaar numbers with its various schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Act. This is besides pensions, scholarships, direct benefit transfer and passports and attendance system in the government offices.