Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 18 (IANS) A cabinet panel Tuesday approved the methodology the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will adopt for collecting demographic and biometric data. The exercise will be standardised with that being conducted for preparing a National Population Register (NPR), UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said.
“For the demographic aspect, we will be recording the name, date of birth, sex, address and name of father/mother/guardian. On the biometric side, we will be taking prints of all 10 fingers, a photograph of the face and an image of the irises of every individual,” UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani told reporters here.

He was speaking after the first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This is perhaps the first time a cabinet committee has been set up on a specific project.

“Since the exercise is aimed at giving inclusion to a large number of people without an ID of any sort and ensuring they get the benefits of various government schemes, the UIDAI proposes to collect the data through various agencies of the central and state governments and others who, in the normal course of their activities, interact with residents,” Nilekani explained.

Such entities will be the “registrars” of the UIDAI and include the departments of Rural Development - for data on the beneficiaries of the National Rural Employment Scheme - and Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs - for data on the recipients of the public distribution system.

“At the central level, these entities could be banks, LIC (Life Insurance Corporation) and the oil marketing companies,” Nilekani, who stepped down as co-chairman of IT bellwether Infosys, said.

As the NPR exercise is also underway, the Registrar General of India will also be an important “registrar” for collecting demographic and biometric data for the unique ID project.

Nilekani also said the authority was drafting a law governing its functioning and to ensure that the data collected remained confidential.

“This will soon be put in the public domain for discussion before being finalised and tabled in parliament,” he said.

“In addition, we have suggested an umbrella law to cover the protection of all data collected in any manner.”

The first batch of unique ID numbers will be rolled out between August of this year and February 2011.

“We hope to issue some 600 million unique IDs in five years,” Nilekani said. “We are confident of universal coverage (of India’s 1.2 billion population) over time.”

The UIDAI has been mandated to issue unique ID (UID) numbers to the residents of India. It was decided to use biometric attributes of the residents to ensure uniqueness of the identities. For this, the UIDAI constituted two committees: the Committee on Demographic Data Standards and Verification Procedure and the Committee on Biometric Standards.

The committees gave their reports on Dec 9, 2009 and Jan 7, 2010 respectively and the UIDAI accepted these.

“Nowhere in the world has such a project on such a large scale ever been implemented. The success of the project would be a classic example of innovation and transparency in governance,” Nilekani said.