Differences between the home ministry and the Planning Commission led the Cabinet to postpone to Friday its meeting — originally slated for on Wednesday — convened to decide on giving the Unique Identification programme a nation-wide mandate.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held discussions with senior Cabinet colleagues including Home Minister P Chidambaram, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to resolve issues between the two parties on the functioning of the UID project and the creation of a National Population Register (NPR).
Sources said Friday’s Cabinet meeting would take a final call on the extension of the UIDAI project to provide ‘Aadhaar’ number cards to the entire population of the country. Senior finance ministry officials sought to play down the current imbroglio, and said the issues would be sorted out soon.
Ahluwalia said the Planning Commission had come to an agreement on ways to proceed with both projects without difficulty. “The Cabinet Committee meeting (on UIDAI) has been rescheduled. It will happen on Friday,” he said after the meeting with the prime minister. “We are quite hopeful that we will resolve these issues in that meeting.”
Besides Ahluwalia and the two senior ministers, Wednesday’s meeting was attended by UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani and National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon.
Ahluwalia said the conclaves looked headed towards a satisfactory conclusion. “There were different views... We reviewed each of them.” The home ministry’s NPR project for constructing a digital database of residents could continue along with the UIDAI, he added.
“I think that there is agreement that both projects can move ahead. Ways can be found that will avoid avoidable duplication. That was the key issue,” Ahluwalia said. “I will send the supplementary note (to the Cabinet).”
At the centre of the controversy is the collection of bio-metric data of all residents. While the home ministry has maintained that the Registrar General of India (RGI) under it has been mandated to collect the data through the NPR, the UIDAI is also gathering biometric records for providing Aadhaar numbers.
Chidambaram has sought clarity on the status on who will capture bio-metric data — the Registrar General India or the UIDAI. He feels that the data collected by UIDAI is “not secure” as it is not verified by a government servant.
The data collection by UIDAI has been done by hired organisations, lending a cause of concern for a section of the officials. Also, the additional expenditure of around Rs 10,000 crore that the government will have to spend if both UIDAI and NPR works concurrently is raising many eyebrows.
Officials said one solution that is being thought off is that the UIDAI would continue doing its work in 17 states besides in the coastal and other sensitive regions of the country, while the NPR would distribute the biometric-enabled numbers.
The UIDAI has the mandate to enroll 200 million people by this March, but it is slated to surpass soon. The government will, thus, have to take a decision on the future of the body.
Ahluwalia has thrown his full weight behind the UIDAI, saying the project should continue. About concerns over duplication of work and extra burden on the exchequer, he had stated that the project “is well worth it”.
The Planning Commission wants more resources for the authority for the continuation of its work. According to the Home Ministry proposal, chip-based smart cards will be issued to all residents on the basis of the record maintained by the NPR — a digital database under construction.
