IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

"We will meet the target of rolling out 600-million UIDs by 2014," Nilekani said at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2011.

The pace of enrolment for unique identification numbers is gathering momemtum, Nilekani said, adding in the next few days the enrolment processing would reach the two-million mark.

The decision was taken recently by the finance ministry and it comes in the wake of a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that asked the income tax department to ensure that a single tax payer is not issued multiple cards.

The proposed new biometric Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards would bear the I-T assessee' fingerprints (two from each hand) and the face.

On Friday, the Union government's project through which a biometric identity card - Aadhar - will be issued to all citizens of the country was launched in the city by the department of posts at Fatehgunj head post office.

The department which is an accredited agency under the Unique Identity Development Authority of India (UIDAI) will shortly start more enrollment centres to reach out to maximum citizens.

This scheme will be launched by post master general of Vadodara Lt Col D K S Chauhan at Fatehgunj head post office on Friday. The department of posts has requested citizens to obtain UIDAI card on production of some documents and the make the project a success. For details, citizens have been asked to contact Fatehgunj head post office between 9 am and 6 pm.

The National ID Card Management Centre has revised the deadline to December 2015, its Executive Director Tulshi Gautam said.

With the halting of the former global tender, the centre needs to invite new tenders, lingering the wait for the cards to another one-and-a-half years.

In June last year, the Haryana government had signed an MOU with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for the issuance of UIDs to all residents of the state.

In Gurgaon, the city administration has entrusted the implementation of the task of unique identification to government school teachers.

This is mainly because local teachers have access to various sections of the society.

Along with the eight mandatory questions under the UID project — name, residence, date of birth, photo, all 10 finger prints and iris image — the citizens will now also be asked to provide information about their status on ration cards, PAN cards, LPG connection and bank accounts. This additional information would be used exclusively by the state government for future planning and eliminating duplication in delivery of services by the food and civil supplies and consumer affairs department. The department is the nodal agency for monitoring the UID project in Himachal.

When reviewing biometrics-based citizen ID projects, great attention must be given to the importance of standards, interoperability, security and/or regulatory compliance goals. However, to be successful, it is also important that the biometric system performs reliably and successfully — under conditions that are representative of the target applications. That’s not easy when one remembers that large-scale, biometrics-based Citizen ID projects must manage the availability of services across various sectors, including education, healthcare, pension providers, rural banking, and others where people come from different backgrounds, types of jobs and diverse environments.

The Unique Identification (UID) project, the national project of the Government of India, aims to give a unique 12-digit number – called Aadhaar – to every citizen of the country, a random number that is generated and linked to a person's demographic and biometric information. The key word is “unique”. Launched in 2009 with the objective of reaching various benefits such as the public distribution system (PDS) to the poor, better targeting of developmental schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and enabling services such as the opening of a bank account, this uses technology based on a biometrics recognition system. Significantly, there will only be a UID number and no UID card as had been proposed earlier by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime.

As India goes about trying to provide a unique identity number to each of its citizens, it is people like Sharma who provide officials with some of the most testing challenges.

The Government's scheme accepts 17 separate forms of photo identification and 32 as proof of address, but some individuals genuinely have nothing.

“In the Indira years, the slogan was ‘ garibi hatao'…. In the 1970s and 1980s, people's aspirations had focussed on basic essentials – roti, kapda, aur makaan…. Since the reforms in the 1990s, the emphasis moved to… bijli, sadak and paani. In recent years, as growth has accelerated and access to basic infrastructure has improved further, aspirations among the poor have shifted again…. Today, it's all virtual things – it's about UID number, mobile phone and bank account…. With that, they can access services, benefits and their rights…. We are looking at a post-Aadhaar world.” – Nandan Nilekani

Srinagar, June 11: The biometric smart card-based attendance system introduced in Civil Secretariat here has fallen flat due to lack of proper infrastructure.

In September last year, the government introduced the biometric smart card attendance system to ensure punctuality of officials and to streamline functioning in both wings of the Civil Secretariat in Srinagar and Jammu.

The plan, conceived by the government headed by Ghulam Nabi Azad, was aimed at tightening the noose around latecomers. Initially, implementation of the project got delayed due to bureaucratic red tape.

It is a concept that seems to have been simply lifted straight from a sci-fi movie. By converting the identities of more than billion individuals into unique numbers, a mix of biometric and demographic information, India will be the first country in the world to have undertaken such a massive project.

It was on the suggestion of the software giant, Wipro that the central government agreed to create a unique identification number for each Indian citizen.

Wipro Technologies, apparently in a letter to the Omar Abdullah government, said that it had had enough of its flip flops. It clearly stated in the letter that it would not be able to execute the UID project in the state.

The Omar Abdullah government had unilaterally scrapped a deal it had entered into with Wipro and another local vendor, Compech Technologies.

Unique identification numbers will soon become the way for payment of wages to workers of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNGREGA) schemes in Jharkhand.

The State government on Friday gave its go ahead to the Information Technology (IT) Department’s plan to modify the Unique Identification Development Authority of India (UIDAI) application so that the payments could be made through using biometric samples and unique identification numbers.

On Tuesday, the UIDAI launched its unique identification or Aadhaar based regime to verify authenticity of a person and a platform to link public entitlements to Aadhaar linked bank accounts.

It would mean that the governments would be able to directly deposit subsidy into the bank accounts of beneficiaries of schemes such as Public Distribution System, old age pension, scholarships and retirement benefits.

The ambitious plan aims to provide a 12-digit identification number which will be stored in a centralized database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information photograph, ten fingerprints and iris of each individual.

“The cabinet has decided to implement Aadhaar in all districts to ensure every citizen residing across the state has a UID number, which will be helpful in establishing one’s identity for several benefits,” the state's Higher Education Minister V.S. Acharya told reporters here.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), set up by the central government under the chairmanship of Nandan N. Nilekani, co-founder of IT bellwether Infosys Technologies Ltd, is the implementing agency in coordination with the state's e-governance department.

For obtaining the UID number, people have to go to designated centres and provide the required information. On fulfilling the requirements, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will dispatch the numbers by registered post to each individual.

The Department of e-Governance of the State government is the registrar for the issue of numbers (an overall authority for the programme). While the process of issuing UID numbers in Bangalore Rural and adjoining districts will commence on April 1, the programme will be launched in Bangalore city on May 1. All residents in the State are expected to be issued numbers by December 2011.

Of the 31 lakh UIDs generated in the nation, Mysore and Tumkur account for 21 lakh. Launched on October 8 last year in Mysore, the ambitious project aims to cover 29 lakh residents in the district by June-end, while 50% target is already met.

M N Vidyashankar, e-governance principal secretary, on Monday said Karnataka accounts for over 21 lakh UIDs in India, which is some 68% of the total. "The project is on in 16 states and we are ahead. Mysore could well become the first district in the nation where all the residents are enrolled to get Aadhar," he said at a day-long workshop for elected representatives.