BANGALORE,Jan21: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has done nearly 120 million enrolments since it started the registration process about a year and a half ago. This,
UIDAI officials say, is the biggest biometric data capture exercise ever done in the world, higher than that by US Visit, which collects the photograph and fingerprint data of foreigners travelling to the US. "Nowhere have so many enrolments been done in so short a time,"
R S Sharma, director general, UIDAI, said on Friday.
Nandan Nilekani, chairman of UIDAI, and Sharma were speaking to reporters who had been taken to showcase the authority's technology centre and the advances the project had made - an exercise that appeared designed to clarify doubts about the project raised in recent weeks. The UID enrolments happen out of designated enrolment centres, and every resident of India is entitled to enroll. Nilekani said a governmental group was looking at how to
converge two major national identification projects - the Unique identification project, which Nilekani leads and comes under the Planning Commission, and
the National Population Register project, being undertaken by the registrar-general of India that comes under the home ministry. Both initiatives, in many ways, duplicate each other's work. Earlier this week, home minister
P Chidambaram asked
PM Manmohan Singh to instruct the Plan panel to bring a note to the Cabinet on the status of the UIDAI, so that there is clarity which agency will perform the task of capturing the biometric data of the population. The UID project is expected to cost about Rs 18,000 crore. Duplication of the efforts would be a big waste of resources.
