February 27, 2013 -
The Revenue department of the Congress-led Delhi government has asked the State Election Commission introduce Aadhaar enrollments at Voters’ Registration Centers across the city.
Reported in The Indian Express, including VRCs, Delhi has 200 venues where people can enrol for Aadhaar cards. Currently, only the Revenue department has linked their services to Aadhaar accounts, though it’s anticipated that more departments and government agencies will also begin to require enrolment.
“More and more services will eventually be linked to Aadhaar,” Principle Secretary (Revenue) Dharam Pal told said in an interview with the Indian Express. “While over 90 percent of the population is already enrolled, we have looked into the requirement for enrolment centers.”
State election offices have previously proposed Aadhaar inclusion to the election commission of India, to check voter and election fraud, though according to the Indian Express report, there is a long way to go before institutionalising Aadhaar.
Reported in BiometricUpdate.com, Aadhaar enrolment has now reached 286.66 million, owed mostly to the launch of the direct transfer scheme.
Though there are positive signs that enrollment is going well, and adoption and coverage are increasing, Aadhaar continues to hit speed bumps complicating the process along the way, as the scale of this project is immense.
Also reported in BiometricUpdate.com, enrollment, as well as the opening of bank account and the distribution of unique identity numbers had previously slowed and could take at least four months to complete the process in the five districts where the direct benefit transfer was initially launched.
In Delhi, the government has had to come up with a temporary solution to ensure that those who have enrolled for Aadhaar numbers but have not yet received cards are able to print a temporary card, as the need to have a physical Aadhaar card is increasing.