Cabinet panel moves to defuse new UID-NPR row
Posted: Sat, Jun 9 2012. 1:00 AM IST
Surabhi Agarwal, surabhi.a@livemint.com
In a bid to defuse another simmering intra-government dispute, the cabinet committee on the unique identity (UID) project has agreed to tweak the process of data collection under the National Population Register (NPR).
In a meeting on Thursday, the cabinet had given the go-ahead to the home ministry to send biometric data of residents collected under NPR to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for the Aadhaar number generation ahead of the so-called “social vetting” procedure or local register of usual residents (LRUR) publication stage.
In the LRUR process, data collected by the Registrar General of India is displayed at prominent places within localities inviting claims or objections from the public. Only after this is authenticated at multiple levels, is it processed further.
While the change in the NPR process was acceptable in principle to UIDAI, the latter was insisting on legalizing it. This led to Union home minister P.
Chidambaram accusing UIDAI of not accepting NPR biometric data and also opposing some camps set up by NPR. According to the now-accepted procedure, the LRUR process will be conducted after the Aadhaar number is generated based on data given by NPR.
A senior official who is familiar with the discussions said that while the change in process was verbally stated during the cabinet meeting in January, where a compromise was reached between the two agencies on collection of biometrics, “there was no legal backing to it”.
He added that legalizing it was important as there were security concerns involved with generating UID numbers based on pre-LRUR data. “The matter is now settled as the committee feels that even the pre-LRUR data is acceptable for Aadhaar generation as it has been collected by government officials during the census and also digitized under scrutiny,” he said.
The reworking of the NPR data collection process will not only hasten the creation of its database, but it will also speed up Aadhaar generation.
However, it would also lead to some additional costs as there are chances of Aadhaar numbers being cancelled after they have been issued based on LRUR feedback. Since the data will now be sent before it is vetted by the public, there are chances of errors creeping in, which could lead to the rejection of NPR data by UIDAI before number generation. The official cited above, who did not want to be identified, said that “these conditions put up by UIDAI have been accepted by the cabinet committee”.
However, some experts have questioned the changes.
A Demographic Data Standards and Verification Procedure (DDSVP) Committee had suggested three ways of Aadhaar enrolment: one based on supporting documents, the second on the introducer system, and the third on the NPR process of public scrutiny.
“If the verification stage follows number generation, NPR will surely gain speed,” said N. Vittal, a former central vigilance commissioner of India. “However, by doing this, (the) home ministry is not walking their talk on the focus on security.”
Vittal, who also chaired the DDSVP Committee, said the home ministry had always been critical of UIDAI for being too liberal in its enrolment strategy. However, it was now sacrificing security for speed, he said.
A senior home ministry official denied this.
“There is no let-up on security issues and it is not compromised,” he said. “The LRUR will still be carried out. Had there been any security implication, the cabinet would not have cleared it in first place.” The official didn’t want to be named.
Late last year, Chidambaram wrote to Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, highlighting the possibility of fake profiles in the UID data. He said that while UIDAI enrolment was based on the production of documents or an introducer-based mechanism, biometric data in NPR is captured by enumerators and is also socially vetted by publication and being placed before local government bodies. Issues about an overlap between the two projects were subsequently highlighted.
Following the spat, the cabinet decided on a compromise between the two agencies. Both projects would continue simultaneously and each would use the biometric data collected by the other. While UIDAI’s mandate was increased to cover a population of 600 million, it also promised to review its systems to make them more robust. It was agreed that in case of discrepancies between UIDAI and NPR data, NPR would prevail.
In his latest letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week, Chidambaram accused the Nandan Nilekani-led UIDAI of not following the 27 January cabinet decision in which it was agreed that the purposes of UIDAI and the home ministry-led NPR project were different.
“Despite these directions from the government of India, UIDAI is objecting to the conduct of the NPR camps in certain states and is also refusing to accept the biometric data of NPR for de-duplication and generation of (the) Aadhaar numbers,” he said in the letter, which was reviewed by Mint.
Chidambaram further said that the NPR project was almost at a standstill due to the UIDAI refusal. UIDAI, which had begun the second phase of enrolment, has so far collected details of 200 million people and has issued around 177.3 million numbers. It is mandated to issue 600 million UIDs by 2014.
Sahil Makkar contributed to this story.