Ranchi, Jan. 11: Babies will be assigned an Aadhaar number on the very day they are born, the state IT department has promised, the ambitious scheme to be rolled out in villages in the next two months with the help of anganwadi workers who would be "e-equipped" with tablets.
State IT secretary Sunil Kumar Barnwal today said that his department would be using the services of 800 anganwadi workers who would use tablets to register and generate Aadhaar numbers online for the newborns.
"The process for ordering the tablets began in the last week of December 2015," Barnwal told the media at Suchana Bhavan this afternoon while presenting a one-year report card of the state IT department.
Barnwal, who is also secretary to chief minister Raghubar Das, said as of now, Jharkhand had recorded 90 per cent Aadhaar coverage, one of the highest in the country, and fresh efforts were being made to reach the 100 per cent mark.
Sarvesh Singhal, director of Jharkhand Space Application Centre (JSAC), a wing of the state IT department, explained how the Aadhaar initiative would work.
"Anganwadi workers can connect with the last mile of society, even in remote places. We will give them tablets, train them on usage so that soon after a baby is born in their respective areas, they can visit the health centre or home to record the parents' details. Once this is done, an Aadhaar number will be generated immediately for their newborn," he told The Telegraph.
Around 300 permanent enrolment centres would be set up across the state at the block level. After a child attains five years, his/her biometrics would be recorded at these centres as mandated under the Aadhaar system. The Aadhaar number assigned to the child at the time of birth would, however, remain the same, he said.
Singhal explained that with the state's Aadhaar enrolment at 85 per cent to 90 per cent, newborns were the only ones left to record. "Only the newborn category is left, which we are targeting to raise our numbers," he said and listed the number of benefits that would accrue as a result of these enrolments.
"This exercise will give us monthly and annual figures of births, gender and other details at block/village levels. It will also help us better maintain mortality rates. Aadhaar would also help track the status of the child as and when he/she grows up and gets enrolled in school and college," he added.
Singhal revealed that on December 29, 2015, the state issued work orders for procuring tablets from Micromax, which has been selected by the Centre's Directorate General of Supplies & Disposals.
Earlier, highlighting his department's major achievements in the last year, Barnwal said the state government had been aggressively promoting IT enabled services both for citizens and the government machinery.
"In one year, under e-district project, we have added 54 new citizen centric services to the existing five and rolled these out across the state. This apart, a host of apps were launched, IT talent hunts conducted and MoUs signed with the Centre and other private partners for setting up Indian Institute of Information Technology," he said.
The department, he added, was also working to set up four more STPIs (Software Technology Parks of India) at Adityapur (Seraikela-Khersawan), Sindri, Deoghar and Bokaro, connect 1,200 panchayats with network and power problems with functional Internet services, formulate policies on IT enabled start-ups and IT services/ITeS, and set up an IT city in the HEC area, among others.
Barnwal also said that a team from Microsoft was likely to visit Jharkhand soon explore opportunities, but did not specify a time-frame. He said during a meeting with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela a couple of months ago in Mumbai, he had passed on an invitation from the chief minister.
"A team headed by Microsoft India chairman Bhaskar Pramanik was to come in December 2015. The visit did not materialise. But they will send a team soon to talk with state government," he said.
|