SURBHI KHYATI : Lucknow, Sat Dec 08 2012, 03:36 hrs
The Government of India wants to introduce Aadhaar-linked cash transfers, but the process of UID enrolment has been suspended in Uttar Pradesh for almost a year.
The last enrolment of UID that happened in the state was in January-February, during the first phase of the Aadhaar scheme. No one is sure when the process will resume.
The Government of India had decided that, in the second phase of the scheme in Uttar Pradesh, the collection of biometric data for Aadhar numbers will be done by the Directorate of Census rather than the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The work of UID will begin along with the last phase of data collection of the National Population Register (NPR) done by the census directorate.
“Because we had to collect biometric data for NPR and the same data was needed for UID, the Government of India decided that the data collection for UID will also be done by Directorate of Census,” said Neena Sharma, Director, Census Operations, Uttar Pradesh. However, the process could start only when the Census directorate completed digitising the NPR data collected in the first phase, said Sharma.
“The digitisation is now complete and we are ready to flag off the next phase of NPR very soon,” she said, refusing to give a date for kick-starting the programme. She said the date will be decided by the Government of Uttar Pradesh.
In the first phase, the UIDAI had enrolled around 1 crore UID numbers across 59 districts of Uttar Pradesh, said C S Mishra, Assistant Director General, UIDAI, Uttar Pradesh. “The last Aadhaar enrolment was done in the state in January-February 2012. After that, for about four to five months, the UIDAI took a break to sort out the challenges and software issues based on the experience of phase one. The second phase began in August in 18 states, where the UIDAI was supposed to make the cards. In Uttar Pradesh, however, the data is to be collected by the census directorate,” said Mishra.
Unlike the UIDAI, the biometric data will now be collected by three central public sector units (CPSU), namely Bharat Electronics, Electronic Corporation of India and Indian Telephone Industries. These agencies will provide technical assistance to the teams of the respective district collectors who, like the earlier rounds of census, will look after the entire programme in each district, said Sharma.
“The modus operandi for NPR data collection will be the same as that of the census data,” she said. The biometric data will be captured in the camps held for the purpose in each district. “A micro plan for each district will be prepared and people will be told in advance about the day and venue where biometric data will be collected,” said Sharma.
She said there will be three categories of Aadhaar-related data collected by the CPSUs. Even those people who have already got their Aadhaar number will have to come to the camps and the agencies will only take their Aadhaar number. The second category will consist of people who have applied for the UID but have not got it and the third is for those who have not applied for the UID. The biometrics for both these categories will be captured by the CPSUs in the camp.
Once the exercise is completed, the data will again be sent to the UIDAI for de-duplication and generation of the UID numbers, she said. “The entire procedure is expected to take another year,” she added. A total of 20 crore UID are expected to be generated in Uttar Pradesh.
