By fe Bureau
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will rollout of the 12-digit unique number Aadhar in a 'few' weeks, chairman Nandan Nilekani said on Monday. He did not specify the date of the launch, which had initially been slated for the first week of September in Andhra Pradesh.
"In the next few weeks, we will be launching Aadhar. It would be launched in multiple locations and hopefully in the next few months, we will be ramping up to millions of enrollments," Nilekani said in Bangalore during a lecture organised by the Forum for Revitalisation of Public Service---a venture of the Direct Taxes Regional Training Institute and National Academy of Customs, Excise and Narcotics, Bangalore.
The UIDAI expects to enroll about 600 million people in the next four years. Nilekani also said that the UID database is designed to be blank to all but the individual concerned and to be made available only for the purpose of national security. "We are also proposing a 3 member independent oversight committee which will oversee the use of this (Aadhar)," he said. "We have to strike a balance between state needs, national security needs and privacy."
In reply to a question on the difficulty in making Aadhar compulsory for everyone, Nilekani said that people would adopt it once they see benefits from it. Nilekani said that the UIDAI was talking to the Reserve Bank of India, the Finance Ministry and banks to allow Aadhar numbers to fulfill the Know Your Customer guidelines for opening accounts. Beside, it is also negotiating with the department of telecommunications and Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) for making the Aadhar number sufficient for getting a mobile phone number, he said.
"Everyone who wants a new SIM card goes to a retail outlet and he has to do some paperwork. If he has an Aadhar number the entire thing can become electronic. Our view is as we can attach more and more benefits to having a number, that is the best way of making people to use it."