By Aman Sharma, ET Bureau | Jul 30, 2016, 06.46 AM IST
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PMO target of March 2017 to finish the Aadhaar project for all 128 crore Indians is driving the change in heart, with earlier concerns over UIDAI’s processes now consigned to the dustbin.
The ordeal of apportioning the labour of identifying each and every Indian citizen to two government bodies has lately swung one way with the Prime Minister's Office setting a strict deadline of March 2017 to roll out the Aadhaar project that would identify every citizen.
It was supposed to be grand division of the country in 2012, neatly between the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the Registrar General of India (RGI), to speed up the Aadhaar-for-all project. Four years later and with 25 crore people in the country still to get an Aadhaar, the union government has now ultimately turned to the UIDAI to deliver the goods.
Last month, UIDAI was asked to enter 10 states and union territories where so far only the RGI had done enrolment since 2012. This comes after five states and Union Territories (UTs) were earlier transferred to the UIDAI from the RGI in 2014.
From having 17 states and UTs under its ambit in 2012, as per the grand division, the RGI is now left with just two states - Assam and Meghalaya - with a National Register of Citizens exercise going on in the former on SC's orders. The Prime Minister Office (PMO) target of March 2017 to finish the Aadhaar project for all 128 crore Indians is driving the change in heart, with earlier concerns over UIDAI's processes now consigned to the dustbin.
"The RGI enrolment model has a flaw that leads to slow progress. They hold a camp, maybe 2-3 times to enroll people for biometrics who are residents of that village as per the census records. It is like a census operation and a monopoly operation. Many a time, the person may not be in the village when the camp is held or could have migrated to some other city," a senior government official explained.
He said the UIDAI however has a system of permanent enrolment camp and multiple registrars to collect biometrics - further a person migrating, from say Uttar Pradesh to Delhi, has the flexibility of giving biometrics in Delhi at any UIDAI camp to enroll for Aadhaar.
Maybe this explains why RGI states fell well behind in enrolment saturation while many UIDAI states have crossed 100 per cent saturation in 2015 itself. While the UPA did the grand division in 2012, it realized its folly two years later with the high population states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar - which were allotted to RGI in 2012 - logged less than 10 per cent enrolment.
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In early 2014, UPA shifted UP and Bihar along with three other states and UTs to UIDAI's ambit. Last June, the Modi government found that Aadhaar saturation in the 12 states and UTs left with RGI was struggling as well - prompting the latest move to transfer 10 states in one go to the UIDAI.
A senior UIDAI official said the writing was on the wall in 2012 itself. "When the grand division happened, UIDAI had already collected biometrics of 18 crore people and we contended that we have the capacity to enroll 10 lakh people daily. The RGI by then had collected biometrics of just one crore people. However, the big population states like UP, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal still got allotted to the RGI," the official said.
Officials in the Home Ministry, which administers control over the RGI, however said RGI's processes of enrolment are far more fool-proof than those of UIDAI and said it was a question of "caution and proceed rather than speed." UIDAI officials however point out a crucial flaw - that the RGI was never mandated to enroll children from 0-5 years of age - who form a population of almost 12 crore in the country and are the biggest chunk of persons still without an Aadhaar in the country.
At a meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary late last year, the Home Ministry was told to bring a cabinet note to authorize RGI to enroll children of this age group as they were getting left out in the RGI-held states. "The UIDAI will now enroll the 0-5 children in RGI-held states. At the time of the grand division, no thought was given on how RGI will enroll 0-5 age children without a mandate," an official says.
UIDAI is now working overtime to ensure that the 10 states and UT's it has got last month reach 100 per cent saturation by March next year, as per a target being monitored closely by the PMO. Like in West Bengal, the UIDAI has asked the RGI to use the 506 enrolment machines with the latter for enrolling children between 5-15 years of age in schools and anganwadis.
The West Bengal government has been told to buy and deploy at least 2000 enrolment machines for enrolling the 23 per cent of the state's population that still does not have an Aadhaar. "This is the strategy UIDAI adopted in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana to speed up enrolment," a top UIDAI official said.
UIDAI is now also entering sensitive states like Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland where there could be security challenges when it comes to enrolment and required strategies will need to be drawn up.
"The premise of the grand division was that the sensitive Coastal and Border States were allotted to RGI and states where UIDAI had already done high enrolment were allotted to us. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are the biggest examples of UIDAI's success - when we got these states in 2014 from RGI, the enrolment levels there were less than 10 per cent. Today, UP stands at 75 per cent enrolment while Bihar stands at 65 per cent enrolment. However, 101 per cent adults in UP and 87 per cent adults in Bihar have an Aadhaar number today. We will repeat this performance by March 2017 in the 10 states and UTs we have got," a top UIDAI official said.
