Thaindian News

Mumbai, June 9 (IANS) Life Insurance Corporation of India Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to act as a registrar for the delivery of the 12-digit identity numbers to the citizens of India.
With this MoU, LIC became the first institutional partner in the UID project from the financial sector. The UIDAI will access the country’s largest life insurer’s 20-crore strong policy database.

“Our partnership with LIC is a significant milestone in the mission to give a unique ID to every resident of India. It will enable a large number of residents to enroll and get an Aadhaar number as well as enable LIC to effectively deliver new products and services to enable financial inclusion,” UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani said.

Nilekani said the first set of about a crore UID numbers would be issued between August 2010 and February 2011 as promised.

“This surely is a challenge for us. But we know how to contact people and getting relevant information from them is our forte. I am sure we will be able to build a great association,” said LIC Chairman T. S. Vijayan.

UIDAI Director General R. S. Sharma said the LIC data will have to be supplemented with biometric information consisting prints of all 10 fingers, both the irises and latest photographs of citizens.

Sharma also said that logistics like data centres, backend offices and call centres are being put in place to ensure the project is implemented flawlessly without meeting any roadblocks.

“We are also putting in place a testing and certification mechanism to ensure the authenticity and the quality of the data,” Sharma added.

The finance ministry has set up a technical advisory group on the unique identification project. The group will suggest on projects on goods and service tax (GST), network and pension schemes, national treasury and management of agency and expenditure information.