IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Enumerating innumerable numbers is a difficult task indeed as the current attempts of those planning the new Indian census know. Think how much difficult it is to establish the identity of every person living in India. Undeterred, India is attempting to do what no other nation has done before i.e. to assign a 16-digit unique identification number (UID) to each individual living in India. India is coming up with the project named as ‘AADHAR’ whose broad plan is to cover the billion-plus people in the country by allotting each person, a unique number and creating a data base containing their photographs, biometric information and details such as name, sex, and age.

Officials in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said on Monday many people got themselves enrolled without providing their biometric identification. The “biometric exception” clause is essentially meant for rarest-of-the-rare cases, say, for people with high degree of physical disabilities, they said.

According to Principal Secretary (revenue) Vijay Dev, applicants must get their documents attested by a government officer or a retired government officer. “Earlier, one could submit his papers and after taking his biometric print, an UID card was issued to him. However, once the process of delivering the UID cards begin, thousands of cards remained undelivered since many of them were not found at the addresses mentioned in the UID form. Learning from the experience, now the verification of documents is mandatory and one can get his papers verified by a government servant or even a retired government servant,” said Dev.

The revenue department has found a number of discrepancies in the data collected in the first phase for the UID Aadhar project in Delhi.

According to the officials, most of these glitches have been noted in the cases of 'biometric exceptions,' where the applicants cannot give their unique identity prints—footprints, finger prints and eye scans — because of serious physical impairments.

The government has informed Parliament that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has set aside its earlier decision of Aadhaar authentication using biometrics saying it is not mandatory upon banks to adopt Aadhaar as additional factor of authentication. The RBI has now notified that banks can continue with the EMV Chip and Pin technology for securing the card present payment infrastructure.

“In the Indira years, the slogan was ‘ garibi hatao'…. In the 1970s and 1980s, people's aspirations had focussed on basic essentials – roti, kapda, aur makaan…. Since the reforms in the 1990s, the emphasis moved to… bijli, sadak and paani. In recent years, as growth has accelerated and access to basic infrastructure has improved further, aspirations among the poor have shifted again…. Today, it's all virtual things – it's about UID number, mobile phone and bank account…. With that, they can access services, benefits and their rights…. We are looking at a post-Aadhaar world.” – Nandan Nilekani

Usually the renewal and issuance are completed in March and hoardings are erected in April. From this year onwards, each hoarding will also display a PIN which will be in the format of TMC-Ward number/serial number. This would give a precise account of total number of legal hoardings in each ward. The process is now halted to facilitate the completion of allocation of PIN for all hoardings for which applications have been received.

The state government has decided to organise sessions at large housing societies and offices in the second phase of its UID enrolment drive that takes off next week. Every resident of India is being assigned a UID — a biometric card that will be used to avail of benefits from government schemes.

Large societies and corporate houses will be able to tie up with the government and set up UID desks on their premises. People who have already got their UID cards will also be able to sync their ration card numbers and LPG gas connection numbers to their cards by sending an SMS, in a process called self-seeding. Banks and post offices will be roped in to help with enrolment.

Officials said over 1.30 crore citizens in Delhi have already been registered for issuance of Adhaar or UID numbers out of a total population of 1.68 crore.

Collection of biometric details of citizens for Adhaar numbers were discontinued in February this year following differences between Union Home Ministry and Unique Identification Authority headed by Nandan Nilekani over collection of biometric details of people.

The proposed National e-Authentication Framework (NeAF) looks at identity management, authentication, authorisation, credential registration, permission assignment and de-registration of users to access government applications on the Internet and cellphones.

Capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) are considering linking all securities transactions with the UID (unique identification) or Aadhaar number and will soon launch a pilot project to explore how this can be done.

A mutual fund company, HDFC Asset Management Co. Ltd, and IFMR Trust, which works in the area of financial inclusion, have been mandated for the pilot project, five people directly involved with the project said independently. None of the five wanted to be identified given the significance and sensitivity of the project.

The department of information technology (DIT) is formulating a policy that will enable citizens to authenticate their identities online to access various government services electronically, including through mobile phones.

The policy will usher in an ecosystem of establishing one’s identity online, be it for accessing information such as land records and bank account details or national security information such as cases under federal investigation at the highest level.

"I have a trail number and I have not been able to get a UID number as enrolment is yet to start in Bangalore," Nilekani, a resident of Bangalore, told reporters on the sidelines of a talk on the Aadhaar project, at the National Institute of Advanced Studies here, on Friday.

Nearly 2,000 biometric machines will be simultaneously pressed into service in all its 20 districts from March-April to capture fingerprints and Iris impressions of its estimated population of 2.75 crore for Aadhar, India’s ambitious project to grant a unique 12-digit identification number to its every citizen.

E-governance expert Anupam Saraph is not convinced with the Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) response to his RTI application, seeking to know the difference between "identification" and "authentication". The UIDAI's reply on Thursday to the RTI application dated December 31, 2017, filed by Saraph, mentioned "authentication" as defined under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.

"I had sought to know the difference between 'identification' of an individual and 'authentication' of biometric or demographic data by UIDAI. The reply did not mention any difference between the two concepts. If UIDAI is the unique identification authority, it should have a definition of 'identification' and 'authentication'," Saraph said.

Pune municipal commissioner, Mahesh Zagade, the census officer for the area coming under the municipal limits, said the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has made arrangements.

With the completion of house listing under the census project, the administration will undertake the UID data collection work with the EC taking fingerprints, photographs and eye scans of citizens.

The biometrics-based unique identification number (UIDN) programme was launched with an open declaration that it would not be mandatory. However, the union government (the chief financier for the project) and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) are busy creating backdoor compulsions for UIDN through financial institutions and service providers, to ensure that people enrol or be left out of the system.

Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, Nandan Nilekani, told The Indian Express the authority aims to create online authentication of every person in the country, something which will be another first in the world to its credit.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), along with the state e-governance department which set January 1, 2011 as the date for rolling out the project in Bangalore, has now decided to postpone it till the end of January 2011.

UIDAI deputy director general, Ashok Dalwai, told DNA that plans to kick-start enrolment for Aadhaar in Bangalore from January 1 next year had been put off as tenders to shortlist the service providers for the project are yet to be finalised.

Welcoming the decision, the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday revived its campaign for a national citizen register to have the record of every Indian citizen in the country.