The Union Cabinet is scheduled to take up next week the issue of extending the mandate of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to enrol people for providing ‘Aadhar’ numbers.
Currently, the Nandan Nilekani-led body cannot go beyond 200 million enrolments, which is likely to be completed by this month-end.
The Cabinet meeting on Wednesday will be held against the backdrop of a letter written by Home Minister P Chidambaram seeking clarity on the authority responsible for the collection of biometric numbers.
While the home ministry has maintained the Registrar General of India under it has been mandated to collect the data through the National Population Register (NPR), the UIDAI wants its mandate to collect data for issuing biometric numbers to extend beyond 200 million people.
Amid this, the Planning Commission has thrown its full weight behind the UIDAI, saying the project must go ahead. “In our view, it should continue,” the commission’s deputy chairman, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said on Friday.
“This can be done, parallel with whatever others (home ministry) are doing. Whatever UIDAI is doing is the right thing to do. It should be continued,” he said.
Ahluwalia said the Planning Commission had no problems if the home ministry wanted to do it differently.
“We are not talking about national security. We are only talking about UID,” he added.
Earlier, Ahluwalia had told Business Standard that a Cabinet note was being moved proposing extension of the nearly three-year-old UIDAI’s mandate to the entire country.
According to the home ministry proposal, chip-based smart card will be issued to all residents on the basis of record maintained by the NPR.
On concerns over duplication of work and extra burden on exchequer, he had stated the project was well worth it.
The home ministry on the other hand has started the work on resident identity (smart) card and the first tranche will be distributed by home minister P Chidambaram tomorrow to citizens of coastal areas of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
“The RIC is a smart card with 64 KB micro processor chip. About 2.56 lakh cards will distributed to all persons who have completed 18 years of age in Andaman and Nicobar Islands,” an official statement said. The smart cards are part of the security set-up the National Population Register (NPR) seeks to develop in the coastal areas of nine maritime states.
