Centre forms panel to end UIDAI, NPR turf war

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The government on Thursday formed a committee of secretaries to resolve differences between the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and the National Population Register (NPR).

The two are partners but have been in a turf war over issues such as enrolment of residents for many years.

The committee of secretaries from the ministries of home, planning and technology will also look at preparing a road map for the projects.

Sources said ministers of home (Rajnath Singh), communications and IT and law and justice (Ravi Shankar Prasad) and planning and statistics (Rao Inderjit Singh) held a meeting on Thursday and decided to form the committee. "It is a good move," said an official. The committee's mandate will be to evaluate the projects independently and recommend a course of action. "This committee is not a decision-making but an advisory body. The final call will be taken by the Cabinet," the official added. But the heads of NPR and UIDAI are not on the panel.

A notification on the committee, its terms of reference and a deadline are awaited.

After the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-led government came to power last month, it was reported the home ministry's NPR will take over the UIDAI.

The committee move may be contrary to this. The home minister had tweeted in mid-June, "Instructed the ministry to update the NPR database and asked for a proposal on an issuance of National Identity Cards to Indian citizens at the earliest." The ministry had recently prepared a Cabinet note, which barred UIDAI from enrolment of people on to the Aadhaar platform. This note, with two from other ministries, has been put on hold pending a decision from the committee.

Business Standard had reported on Wednesday three ministries had prepared separate Cabinet notes, chartering contradictory courses for UIDAI.

While the decision of the home ministry signalled the end of enrolment by UIDAI, it moved a Cabinet note for approval to use funds allocated to enroll another 300 million people. At the same time, the department of electronics and information technology prepared a note to use the Aadhaar platform to run its proposed e-districts programme, to provide e-governance solutions to select districts initially.

UIDAI, which has given Aadhaar numbers to over 640 million residents, was conceptualised during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance government. The NPR is the brainchild of the previous NDA government. The project, meant for coastal areas, was expanded to entire India. The two projects have similar objectives.