Ending all speculation about the survival of UPA's flagship direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme of providing subsidies directly to targeted sections of society, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly decided to back the scheme.
At a high-level meeting on Saturday attended by senior cabinet ministers Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh, junior minister for planning Rao Inderjit Singh, home secretary Anil Goswami and director general of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Vijay S Madan, the prime minister directed that the Aadhaar scheme be continued and its usage expedited in direct transfer of fuel subsidy and social security payments.
The UIDAI and the DBT are UPA-era schemes to provide subsidies through direct credit to Adhaar-linked bank accounts of beneficiaries.
According to a report in the Business Standard, prime minister Narendra Modi also asked officials to revive the National Identification Authority of India Bill, which was earlier trashed by the standing committee on finance headed by Yashwant Sinha in the UPA regime. Tabling of the bill will give legal status to UIDAI.
"At a meeting on Saturday, Modi directed DBT for liquefied petroleum gas cylinders, pension and scholarships should be expedited in the 300 districts in which more than 80 per cent of the district population had received Aadhaar numbers," the report added.
This decision could help the BJP government cut subsidies substantially in the coming budget.
Through the past few weeks, several media reports indicated that it may be the end of the road for UIDAI and Aadhaar with Rajnath Singh giving primacy to the National Population Register, envisioned during the Vajpayee government. In contrast to Aadhaar cards, the NPR identifies bonafide Indian citizens.
Reports suggested that the new government wanted to end the duplication that the previous regime had embarked upon with both projects working independently, indicating that a merger may be on the cards too.
However, the BS report says Modi has now ruled out the merger of UIDAI with NPR.
UIDA was set up by the UPA government in 2009 under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani . The agency provides a unique identification number to all resident Indians. About Rs 3,500 crore was spent on the Aadhaar programme with enrollment of 50 crore people.
The NPR is a comprehensive identity database maintained by the registrar general and census commissioner of India under the home ministry.
Reports in the last week of June said the government wants a detailed enumeration for the NPR amid a three-year rollout schedule, with the end-register being linked to voter IDs. This means one purpose of the NPR would be to delete non-citizens from the voting list – at the very least. Though the biometric database accumulated by Aadhaar (over 600 million people) will be integrated into the NPR database, it appeared that NPR was being given precedence over Aadhaar in the new dispensation.
According to the BS report, UIDAI will continue to report to the planning commission and, eventually, to the prime minister.
However, it must be noted that Aadhaar is not mandatory. On 24 March 2014, the Supreme Court asked the previous government to withdraw all orders making Aadhaar or the unique identification (UID) number mandatory for residents. The apex court also asked UIDAI not to share any information, including biometrics, that it collected under the Aadhaar project with any government agency without the permission of the person.
Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi has reportedly asked Jaitley to try and resolve all legal issues surrounding Aadhaar -- one of the major doubts surrounding Aadhaar is that it has no legal standing and affords no privacy protection to the biometric information collected from people.
Firstpost Editor R Jagannathan has argued earlier that there could be a middle ground where both Aadhaar and NPR can work together and not raise a stink in the process.