TNN Feb 17, 2013, 05.09AM IST
Ten years ago, Durga Devi left her village in UP's Bulandshahr district and came to live in Delhi with her husband. She found herself a job and a voter ID card. That was her pehchaan patra. Then, she rushed to get registered for a UID number, convinced the magical 12-digit number would entitle her to BPL rations and other doles. She was happy. Soon after, she got to know that she'd also have to register at the National Population Register (NPR) camp. She's stumped, just like so many others across the country.
Thousands across the country can't fathom why they must spend hours getting enrolled for both UID and NPR. With no clear answers, they don't have an option to queuing up at both counters. That's largely because of the conflicting signals they've been getting ever since the projects were launched. First, it was said UID wasn't mandatory. Then state governments started tagging the Aadhaar number to services such as doles, gas connections, marriage and property registrations and a host of other services. This triggered the UID rush. The conviction is deep that solutions to all ills and transmission losses lie in the Aadhaar number. In Maharashtra, the Bombay high court recently suggested linking ration cards to Aadhaar numbers to counter the problem of bogus ration cards. The state's claims that it was short staffed failed to impress the judges.
Then, people got to know NPR was a must-have, skip all the camps and you're struck off the rolls. Then it's a whole new process getting back on the national list of residents. Those who have been to NPR camps say once you're there it's smooth sailing, but the run-up to it can get complicated. Especially since they don't entertain you if you don't have the form the NPR staff is supposed to drop at your address.
To be fair, the government has made some efforts to clear the air and explain why the twin processes are needed, but these clearly haven't hit home. Pan-India, it's chaos. However much the government explains that UID is just a number and NPR has a statutory backing to issue an ID card, Ravi Subramaniam of Bangalore and many like him elsewhere refuse to understand.
Their refrain: "How many more numbers and cards are we expected to collect. First it was PAN, then UID and now NPR." The government logic that NPR is important for security implications doesn't cut ice with him.
Take the story in Hyderabad. A February 15 deadline to link gas connections with Aadhaar has triggered chaos and confusion at Aadhaar enrolment centres. That the deadline is extended to March 15 is little relief. Although the UID Authority claims significant progress in Andhra Pradesh, the picture on the ground is not as rosy.
Thousands throng enrolment centres. Sloppy project execution, time-taking iris scans and faulty machines aren't helping. At the Nampally centre, a livid P Satyaprasad who's spent a good part of the day waiting says, "When I submitted the Aadhaar application last Wednesday, I was told to get the biometrics done on August 6. If all goes well, the card will take another three months to reach me. This means I'll be forced to buy LPG cylinders at Rs 1,030 once the deadline expires on March 15." And, there is none to answer his query.
In Bangalore things are equally messy. In several centres, only a miniscule number of applications are being processed because of a staff crunch.
Application forms aren't available at several centres. At R T Nagar post office, photocopy shop owners are making a fast buck selling copies of the forms. But in Chennai, where only NPR is being rolled out, things look a lot smoother.
That said, it's also true that the Nandan Nilekani-led UIDAI has rolled out its services faster than NPR. But, on the ground, clarity is yet to emerge piling misery on citizens. The UIDAI began issuing Aadhaar numbers in September 2010. So far, nearly 25cr have been issued and the target is to complete 60cr by next year.
Both processes are blighted by inefficiency, red tape and turf wars between UIDAI and the home ministry. In many cases, vendors who have been outsourced the enrolment work have added to the problems. In Delhi, for instance, those who enrolled for Aadhaar before April 1, 2012, and still haven't received their numbers may have to enrol all over again. This is because data of firstphase applicants is either lost or rendered unusable because of encryption errors.
CLEARING THE AIR
Here's how UIDAI is different from NPR. UIDAI is being rolled out in 16 states, NPR is a nationwide project. A lot of the confusion is in the states where both projects are gathering data concurrently. UP, for instance, is a non-UID state. Delhi has both. NPR, based on demographic data collected during Census 2011, proposes to issue cards bearing Aadhaar numbers. A resident of an NPR state need not bother about UID.
