FE BUREAU
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 19, 2011 at 0450 hrs IST
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 19, 2011 at 0450 hrs IST
New Delhi: The Nandan Nilekani-led UID Authority of India (UIDAI) won’t be deprived of the funds required to take its Aadhaar project to larger sections of the population. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has reaffirmed his commitment to release requisite funds for the UID mission, an integral part of UPA-II’s governance reform process.
The minister’s decision, confirmed to FE by sources, comes against the backdrop of unease in sections of the Planning Commission with UIDAI’s financial and operational freedom. The Comptroller and Auditor General knocking at the authority’s doors for a seemingly-premature performance audit hasn’t dissuaded the minister either.
According to sources, as the expenditure finance committee meets soon to decide on UIDAI’s scaled-down demand (it had earlier sought R15,000 crore), the finance minister’s stand would weigh in its favour.
Mukherjee’s assurance could lift spirits at the authority, which has embarked on the project to issue Aadhar numbers to half of the Indian population by 2014. Lakhs of these numbers are generated every day, but there is a need to expedite the enrolments and biometric scanning.
The UIDAI’s mandate is to provide a unique identification number to every Indian with linked data in biometrics. Its Aadhar project is perceived to have multiple benefits: Improved delivery of public services, reduced transaction costs and better-targeting of welfare payments under schemes like MNREGS as well as subsidies on LPG, kerosene, food and fertiliser. The resultant benefits for the economy are likely to be considerable.
Set up in February 2009, the UIDAI is an attached office of the Planning Commission, with Nilekani, its chairman, having the rank of a Cabinet minister and powers delegated by the Prime Minister.
Nilekani recently sought to address the row over the multiple agencies involved in enrolling and biometric data collection by saying that the authority hasn’t insisted on doing every job on its own. UIDAI will essentially give technology-led back-end support and there could be multiple registrars for biometric data gathering, he said.
Commenting on the alleged duplication of the authority’s mandate with that of the census commissioner who is developing the National Population Register, Nilekani said a final call on how the duplication could be avoided would be taken by the cabinet committee on UID.
Biometrics gathered by UIDAI include iris, photograph and fingerprints. Inclusion of iris as a biometric, intended to make the identification data more reliable, has inflated the cost of the project. The final goal of the project is to provide online IDs to the entire population of 1.2 billion.
According to sources, as the expenditure finance committee meets soon to decide on UIDAI’s scaled-down demand (it had earlier sought R15,000 crore), the finance minister’s stand would weigh in its favour.
Mukherjee’s assurance could lift spirits at the authority, which has embarked on the project to issue Aadhar numbers to half of the Indian population by 2014. Lakhs of these numbers are generated every day, but there is a need to expedite the enrolments and biometric scanning.
The UIDAI’s mandate is to provide a unique identification number to every Indian with linked data in biometrics. Its Aadhar project is perceived to have multiple benefits: Improved delivery of public services, reduced transaction costs and better-targeting of welfare payments under schemes like MNREGS as well as subsidies on LPG, kerosene, food and fertiliser. The resultant benefits for the economy are likely to be considerable.
Set up in February 2009, the UIDAI is an attached office of the Planning Commission, with Nilekani, its chairman, having the rank of a Cabinet minister and powers delegated by the Prime Minister.
Nilekani recently sought to address the row over the multiple agencies involved in enrolling and biometric data collection by saying that the authority hasn’t insisted on doing every job on its own. UIDAI will essentially give technology-led back-end support and there could be multiple registrars for biometric data gathering, he said.
Commenting on the alleged duplication of the authority’s mandate with that of the census commissioner who is developing the National Population Register, Nilekani said a final call on how the duplication could be avoided would be taken by the cabinet committee on UID.
Biometrics gathered by UIDAI include iris, photograph and fingerprints. Inclusion of iris as a biometric, intended to make the identification data more reliable, has inflated the cost of the project. The final goal of the project is to provide online IDs to the entire population of 1.2 billion.