UID Aadhar , kicks off in Bihar

Data collection exercise under the unique identity project ‘Aadhaar’ has begun in the Bind block in Nalanda district, a senior official said today. The UID project caters to the identity and security of the poor and marginalised in the country and Smaarftech Technologies has been assigned to do the job in Bihar, project director Binod Mishra said. “This field exercise is first of its kind in the country where biometric data of 20,000 enrollees would be collected on the proof of concept phase of the project and Bihar, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have been selected after a countrywide survey for carrying out the Proof of Concept (PoC) study,” Mishra said. The 16-digit unique identification number to be assigned to each individual by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will now come under the new name ‘AADHAR’ and will also bear a logo, which was unveiled on Monday. Of the Rs 1,900 crore allotted to the project in this year’s budget, the UID has set aside Rs 600 crore for technology contracts with the rest Rs 1,300 crore to be used to enable the registrars. As the UID sets to roll out the first set of numbers by January 2011, it’s roping in more and more private companies as registrars in the project. UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said the project had progressed satisfactorily over the nine months of its inception. He was confident of issuing the first unique identification number by August and covering the population of 600 million within four years.