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New Delhi: The
Planning Commission Friday said it will take the Unique
Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issue to the cabinet
next week to resolve its differences with the home ministry.
The project, called Aadhar, aims to give every Indian resident a
unique identity number. It has already consumed Rs.672 crore till
November, said informed sources.
"We are putting up a note before the cabinet shortly," Planning
Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters.
The issue came into focus after Home Minister P. Chidambaram
Thursday wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resolve the
differences over the project involving UIDAI.
The sources said given the prime minister's support to the
project, the UIDAI may get a statutory status to carry on its work
independently.
A parliamentary standing committee has rejected the UIDAI Bill.
The home ministry wants clarity on which agency - the
Registrar-General of India (RGI) or UIDAI - will capture the
biometric data of the population as UIDAI has sought an extension
of its mandate.
"Since there is no clarity..., I requested the Planning Commission
to bring a paper to the cabinet and obtain a decision," said
Chidambaram's letter.
The UIDAI, headed by technocrat Nandan Nilekani, comes under the
Planning Commission. The RGI functions under the home ministry.
According to Chidambaram, the RGI had been asked to collect
biometric data of all residents and send it to UIDAI to generate
Aadhar numbers.
Stating that RGI's work was "proceeding well and is expected to be
completed by mid-2013", Chidambaram said the UIADI was also
authorised to collect biometric data initially for 100 million
people, and later of up to 200 million people.
The sources said the home ministry feels data collected by the
UIDAI is not secure and has not been verified by a government
servant.
They said while the RGI staff actually visited households, the
UIDAI invited people to designated centres, where data collection
was been done by hired organisations.
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