UIDAI bats for Aadhaar cards for children to meet December deadline

NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has started an aggressive drive to issue Aadhaar to infants and children below 18 years as it looks to ensure "universal coverage" by December, having missed the June deadline.
Unique Identification Authority of India has issued 87 crore Aadhaar numbers as on July 1. To reach the full coverage of more than 120 crore people, it will have to significantly increase the number of Aadhaars issued in a month from the current average of 2-2.5 crore. "The coverage is low, especially in the northeast. Besides, enrolment of infants and children between 5 and 18 years is yet to pick up speed. Hence we will now focus on these gap areas so as to cover all by end of this year," said Sreeranjan, deputy director general at Unique Identification Authority of India.

According to him, there are around 15 crore infants in the age group of 0-5 years and 24 crore children between 5 and 18 years who would now be enrolled on a priority basis.

Speaking at the round table on direct benefits and basic income transfers organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Sreeranjan said 94% of the population aged 18 years and above in the 24 states where the enrolment is being done by UIDAI are already covered.



"However, it (the coverage) is only 75 per cent-80 per cent in states where the Registrar General of India is doing the enrolment," he said, hinting that the slow pace of work in these states is another impediment to meeting the deadline.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in September last year directed Unique Identification Authority of India to ensure "universal coverage" under Aadhaar by June 2015 to use the platform for rolling out direct benefit transfer across all social welfare scheme. While the prime minister's Jan Dhan Yojana is dependent on it wherein the beneficiaries can open their bank accounts using their 12-digit Aadhaar number, the PMO has also directed that passports be linked to Aadhaar data. Meanwhile, chief economic advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian said sales of subsidised LPG cylinders under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme have come down by about 25 per cent as most 'ghost beneficiaries' have been eliminated. "We estimate that in 2014-15, savings could be as much .`12,700 crore, which is a lot of money. But savings will be lower this year at around.`6,500 crore," Subramanian told the UNDP conference call on Thursday while commenting on the fiscal impact of the DBT scheme. He, however, cautioned that the government should make sure genuine beneficiaries are not excluded. Subramanian said that government was expecting commercial sales to go up by a huge number, but actually this did not happen and there was only 6 per cent increase.

Under 'Pahal' scheme, earlier known as Direct Benefit Transfer, LPG cylinders are sold at market rates and consumers get the subsidy directly in their bank accounts. This is done either through an Aadhaar or a bank account linkage. The CEA said institutional arrangement has improved because of schemes like Pahal, Jan Dhan and Aadhaar, and "things are now working"