UIDAI gets Rs 1,900 crore, nearly 16-fold increase

Government today proposed a nearly 16-fold increase, at Rs 1,900 crore, for Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani.

While in the last budget the allocation for UIDAI was Rs 120 crore, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, in his budget speech today, proposed Rs 1,900 crore to it.

The Authority is currently in the operational phase, finalising the various aspects for the roll out of the Unique Identification Number to the residents of the country.

"It (UIDAI) will be able to meet its commitments of issuing the first set of UID numbers in the coming year. It would provide an effective platform for financial inclusion and targeted subsidy payments. Since the UIDAI will now get into operational phase, I am allocating Rs 1,900 crore to the Authority for 2010-11," Mukherjee said.

As per the roll-out plan, the first set of 16-digit UID numbers would be out between August this year and February 2011. The Authority has set a target of providing 600 million UIDs in the next five years.

The current proposed allocation of Rs 1,900 crore would be used for procurement of bio-metric devices and vendor services including setting up of secure databanks and collection of the same besides for the pilot project to be started in four states by June.

The UIDAI was established under the aegis of the Planning Commission for which a notification was issued in January last year.