If you have been waiting to get that 12-digit wonder number, buck up. The Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is rolling out Phase II of Aadhaar enrolment on April 25. The Government of Karnataka, which is the registrar in the State for the Aadhaar scheme, has to finalise the enrolment agencies, and once that is done, fresh enrolments will start immediately using the new Version 2.0 software.
“The enrolment process Version 2.0 has improved processes, improved security, accuracy, quality standard and validity. This is more advanced than the software that we used for Phase I. There will be fewer problems at the back end. We are training regional officers and enrolment agencies on this. Once the new version is released on April 25, the registrars will be free to start enrolments,” said Dr
Ashok Dalwai, deputy director general, UIDAI.
Mr Dalwai said no deadline has been set to complete the next phase, but “we need to complete enrolments by the end of 2013. We will commit to delivering Aadhaar numbers within 90 days of enrolment. With improved processes, I hope to achieve this well within time.”
The UIDAI had stopped fresh enrolments at the end of February and all enrolment data packets had to be submitted to the UID technology centre, the Central Identification Repository (CIDR), in Bengaluru, by that date.
This followed the rejection by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance of the National
Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, in its present form. The Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram also wrote to the Prime Minister to get the Planning Commission to clarify the issue of duplication of data, which was being done by the Registrar General of India for the National Population Register, and by the UIDAI for the Aadhaar scheme.
The Union Cabinet has now decided that the task of collecting data of residents will be shared by the UIDAI and the RGI. The UIDAI’s previous mandate was to issue Aadhaar numbers to at least 60% of the population (around 73 crore out of 123 crore population) by the year 2014, apart from enrolling 20 crore by March 2012. The UIDAI completed its mandate of enrolling 20 crore residents across India in February 2012.
In Karnataka, in Phase I, UIDAI enrolled 1.56 crore out of the total population of 6.11 crore. The rest (40% by UIDAI and 60% by RGI) will be enrolled in Phase II.