Govt to sort out Aadhaar glitches

Mobile-based OTP, coupons, and offline transactions in case of authentication failure approved

The death of an 11-year-old girl in Jharkhand after her family was denied food because their ration card was not linked to Aadhaar has forced the Union government to come out with an alternative delivery mechanism for social welfare schemes.
 
The mechanism includes use of coupons, card-based offline transactions and one-time passwords sent to the mobile phones of beneficiaries for verification. The government will soon launch a few pilot projects to assess the viability of these new measures.
 
Currently, the Union government, which has made Aadhaar mandatory for all its social welfare schemes, is facing problems on two counts. First, there are beneficiaries who are yet to be provided with Aadhaar, a 12-digit unique identity number, or have not linked their Aadhaar with welfare schemes. Then there is a set of people who are either not receiving government subsidies because of connectivity issues or because their fingerprints do not match during the verification process.
 
“The authentication failure is around 13-15 per cent. Poor connectivity is responsible for 10 per cent of the cases. And in less than five per cent of cases, the biometrics of  individuals did not match with the UIDAI database,” said an official who was privy to a review meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office last month.
 
This alternative mechanism is expected to remain in place till the time every panchayat in the country is provided broadband coverage. The government expects to complete this exercise by 2018. The official said the high-level meeting was called in the wake of the tragic death of an 11-year-old girl in Jharkhand on September 28. Her family had alleged that it was denied rations for months and their ration card was cancelled because it was not linked to Aadhaar. According to sources, Aadhaar seeding is less than 50 per cent in social welfare schemes related to food and fertilisers.
 

“We have directed Union ministries and other government agencies to ensure that no beneficiary is denied benefits in the absence of Aadhaar, connectivity issues and failure of authentication. The heads in the ministries have been asked to take strict action against erring officials if any beneficiary is found not to be receiving benefits,” the official said.
 
“This will be a temporary measure till the time a beneficiary is enrolled in the system and other issues are sorted out. Officials have to maintain a separate register for such cases and it has to be reviewed by their senior colleagues in order to prevent leakages,” the official added.
 
The Union government has also asked its ministries and state governments to design their own protocols to provide services to beneficiaries who can not visit centres. “The state governments can use the help of self-help groups or use their own people,” the official said.
 
The government will soon ask individuals to visit Aadhaar data centres, to be opened in post offices and banks, and update their database with mobile numbers. This is different from the government directive where individuals have to visit telecom operators to link their phone numbers with Aadhaar by February 8. Currently, there is no mechanism through which the UIDAI can access data of the mobile operators. The government believes that updating the UIDAI database with mobile numbers will not be difficult, as around 43 per cent of the people had provided their mobile numbers at the time of enrolment.
 
FINDING BASIS

• Centre to take action against officials if beneficiaries are denied benefits in the absence of Aadhaar
• Ministries told to design alternative mechanisms such as one-time password sent on mobile, QR code mechanism, and offline mode in case of biometric-based authentication failure and connectivity issues
• Centre asks ministries, state governments to find ways to deliver services at doorstep for the aged and the infirm
• Residents will need to visit Aadhaar centre for updation of their mobile number from January 1
• Linking Aadhaar number with mobile operator is different from adding mobile number to UIDAI database. The UIDAI doesn’t have access to telecom operator database
• Centre says it has already captured mobile number of 43% residents during their enrolment for Aadhaar