Kirtika Suneja / New Delhi August 19, 2010, 1:58 IST
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) plans to enrol all 1.2 billion residents of the country in its database in a staggered manner for the next seven years. This decision had been taken after the Union finance ministry decided to provide the funding required for the purpose in a phased manner, senior UIDAI officials told Business Standard.
“We are implementing this programme in a phased manner and gradually scaling up. It’s because our budget will come in two or three different phases,” said an official close to the development.
This scaling up would mean that in the first year, the authority will enrol a maximum of 10 million people, and this number will go up to 200 million in the next year.
UIDAI plans to issue the first set of 12-digit unique identity numbers, or ‘Aadhaars’, between August 2010 and February 2011. Earlier, it planned to issue 600 million Aadhaars in the next four-and-a-half years, beginning August. It wanted to start with 100 million unique numbers during this financial year.
Last month, the government approved Rs 3,023.01 crore for the second phase of the project. However, the authority had asked for Rs 7,000 crore for this phase for enrolling people and it has been granted Rs 3,000 crore of that. The authority says the decision was taken a month ago when the finance ministry extended the second phase of the funding.
“Funding for the second phase has been divided into two parts. The finance ministry will give the rest of the funds as and when we need it. Hence, we will scale up the enrolment process in a staggered manner. We have also set the data centre limit for the first phase of enrolment to 100 million,” the official added.
ROLL CALL
HOW THE ENROLMENT PROCESS IS PLANNED OUT
Number of people to
be enrolled (in million)
2010-11 0-10
2011-12 10-100
2012-13 100-200
2013-14 200-500
2014-15 500-700
2015-16 700-1000
2016-17 1,000-1,100
The enrolment will now be such that all the residents — according to the 2001 Census — will have their Aadhaars by 2017. UIDAI has finalised 15 training agencies empanelled with it for providing training to various categories of personnel working for the enrolment agencies.
The training agencies empanelled with UIDAI are All India PTU DEP Association, Aptech, CDAC, Cavalier India, Everonn Education, Ecit, CMC, Hero Mindmine Institute, India Can Education, Manipal K12 Education, Manipal Education, NIIT Ltd, Tata Interactive Systems, DOEACC Society and Crux Management. They will capture demographic and biometric information of residents and send it to UIDAI’s central database to enrol residents for Aadhaar. The authority has also appointed a testing and certification agency to conduct online testing to assess the individual’s ability to carry out enrolments according to its prescribed standards.