A government official, who didn’t want to be named, said the home ministry continues to maintain that the data collected for Aadhaar is unusable for the population register
Surabhi Agarwal & Sangeeta Singh
New Delhi: Last-ditch efforts to ensure the coexistence of India’s two flagship and at-war ID projects—the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Aadhaar and the Registrar General of India’s (RGI) National Population Register (NPR)—may have worked, according to government officials.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chaired a meeting that was attended, among others, by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, home minister P. Chidambaram, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani and national security adviser Shivshankar Menon.
“My feeling is that we have come to some kind of consensus that both the projects can continue and that duplication can be avoided. I’m also hopeful that, on Friday, when the cabinet meets, the issue will somewhat be resolved,” said Ahluwalia after the meeting. “I am moving a fresh cabinet note for this.”
An official at the home ministry, who didn’t want to be named—RGI comes under the purview of this ministry—confirmed that some sort of consensus had been reached between the two sides. A government official, who didn’t want to be named, said the home ministry continues to maintain that the data collected for Aadhaar is unusable for the population register.
Nilekani declined comment.
Mint couldn’t independently ascertain whether a consensus had indeed been reached and, if so, the nature of the arrangement between the two projects.
The meeting of the cabinet committee on the unique ID project that is now scheduled for Friday was previously scheduled for Wednesday, but cancelled at the last minute.
Earlier on Tuesday, cabinet secretary Ajit Kumar Seth met UIDAI and home ministry representatives, according to a senior Planning Commission official. This person, who didn’t want to be named, said the Plan panel and the ministry of finance have separately sent notes to the cabinet justifying support for the unique ID project. India’s apex planning body —UIDAI is “attached” to it, to use government lingo—is a strong supporter of the project.
Wednesday’s meeting was expected to resolve the conflict between UIDAI and RGI. The entities have been on collision course for several months.
Last Saturday, Chidambaram visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to distribute resident identity cards, each having a photograph, basic details and biometric data of the holder. The cards are part of the NPR project being spearheaded by RGI.
The day before, UIDAI officials hosted a press conference at the body’s technology centre in Bangalore in a bid to dispel fears that its use of biometric technology would be unreliable and flawed. During the conference, they announced that the project had become one of the largest biometric systems in the world.
Visualized as projects that would complement each other, the two initiatives have, instead, become either-or alternatives with Delhi’s power circles abuzz with details of who is supporting what. Last week, Chidambaram wrote to Singh, asking him to decide which one should collect biometric data from people.
Meanwhile, both projects have been proceeding apace.
UIDAI has, in two years, grown from a handful of rooms to occupying two floors of the Jeevan Bharati building in the Capital’s heart.
On a recent visit by this reporter, officials at the agency were keen to present a picture of business-as-usual, although they do admit that there is some uncertainty over whether the project will continue and in its present form.
In its new avatar, UIDAI may just become a back-office of NPR, said an official associated with the latter. This person, who didn’t want to be named, stressed that the home ministry does not endorse the process adopted by UIDAI to collect biometric data.
UIDAI, which has a mandate to collect data from 200 million people, has met that target. Unless Friday’s meeting gives it the go-ahead to collect data from more—a cabinet note to the effect will be taken up on Friday—it will have to wait to process data collected by NPR.
Apart from the unsuitability of the data being collected by UIDAI for “security” purposes, the home ministry also has a problem with the approach of using multiple registrars to collect data from people. “In that case data will lie in small packets at multiple locations and chances of leakage and misuse become very high. This can create havoc,” the official said.
He added that while UIDAI’s data is fine for “developmental” use, it cannot be used for “security” purposes.
UIDAI has indeed made some progress on the first.
Last year, the government mandated a committee headed by Nilekani to study the feasibility of direct cash transfers of various government subsidies using the UID number. The Reserve Bank of India and the department of telecommunications notified the Aadhaar number as a valid know-your-customer (KYC) norm for opening new bank accounts and getting mobile connections. The authority was even in talks with the Securities and Exchange Board of India to start a pilot for Aadhaar’s use as a KYC norm for mutual fund products.
UIDAI offers people enrolling an option to open a full-fledged account and officials claim eight out of 10 people who enrol for a number opt for one.
The body has started a project for the direct transfer of payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to Aadhaar-linked bank accounts in Jharkhand. MGNREGS is the government’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme. Since the parliamentary standing committee’s rejection of the National Identification Authority of India Bill in December, however, questions have been raised in some quarters over whether the project continues to enjoy the support of the government and the ruling Congress party.
One Congressman, who did not want to be named, said it did and added that Rahul Gandhi was “convinced that the project is good and will ensure the delivery of the government’s welfare schemes”. This person added that Gandhi also thought it would take time for this to happen, which can probably explain why the UIDAI project, which once made regular appearances in his speeches, has been absent from addresses he has been delivering on the campaign trail in Uttar Pradesh.
Another Congressman said both Gandhi and his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who once supported the project unreservedly, hadn’t come out openly in support of the under-fire initiative for some time now. He added that this could be because of a growing feeling, even within the party, that the project needed to be refined. It would survive, he said, asking not to be identified.
The government itself may be considering allowing both projects to continue.
“If there is a small overlap (with NPR) that would not matter... There are many government programmes which do similar things and we don’t apply the principle that you should not have any overlap,” Ahluwalia said on Monday in Thiruvananthapuram. “We regard the Aadhaar project as a very important national project that will enable much greater efficiency in the operation of a large number of government schemes.”
A second Plan panel official, who didn’t want to be named, said the two projects have different objectives. Ahluwalia considers UID more of a development programme, this person added.
If both projects are allowed to collect data, the government will spend an extra Rs. 6,000 crore.
“The government spends Rs. 3 trillion on subsidies every year and even if a 10% improvement is achieved in terms of containing leakages and wastage, it will pay for everything,” said a senior government official, who didn’t want to be named. “Amid all this controversy, people are not appreciating the fact that UIDAI has created a technology platform, which can process one million biometrics a day, has an accuracy rate of around 99.65% and can be scaled up to build a database of 1.2 billion people. People should appreciate the enormity of what has been achieved.”
surabhi.a@livemint.com
Sahil Makkar, Liz Mathew, and Appu Esthose Suresh contributed to this story.
