Acting as proxy

The Narendra Modi government must be disturbed that its Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance system (BAS) has not taken off the way it had hoped. While the system is operational across 149 government offices in New Delhi, the gap between the number of employees registered under the system and those who actually mark their attendance using it is huge. Take this: the Cabinet Secretariat has 275 employees registered under the BAS but only 227 mark their attendance using it. In the Central Information Commission, under the Department of Personnel & Training, the figures read 141 versus 68; in the Central Public Works Department, the figures stand at 10,514 against 2,456. The worst performances have been recorded at the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (98 to 0) and the Office of Registrar General & Census Commissioner under the Ministry of Home Affairs (419 to 0).