Govt says no beneficiary will suffer due to lack of Aadhaar

Even as the government ensures elimination of fake or duplicate beneficiaries in various schemes, no eligible person is to be denied any benefit or services merely for the lack of UID number, Parliament was informed on Thursday.

"In doing so (leveraging Aadhaar to weed out fakes and duplicates), it has to be ensured that no eligible person suffers, or is denied any benefit or service, merely for the lack of an Aadhaar," Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

On Monday, the Supreme Court asked the Centre and all the states to "adhere to" its earlier order that no person should be denied any benefits or "suffer" for not having Aadhaar cards, issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

A batch of pleas is pending in the apex court against decisions by some states to make Aadhaar cards compulsory for a range of activities including salary, PF disbursals and marriage and property registrations.

Singh said: "Various ministries, departments and agencies of Centre and States that implement different schemes/ programmes involving provisions of benefits or services are encouraged to leverage Aadhaar for elimination of fakes and duplicates from the list of beneficiaries increasing efficiency of implementation and achieving higher levels of transparency in operations."

He also said that the Election Commission has issued instructions for the launch of a comprehensive 'National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme' with a major objective of linking and authentication of electors' data with Aadhaar data.

On providing legal status to UIDAI project, Singh said the National Identification Authority of India Bill (NIDAI Bill), 2010 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on December 3, 2010.

Subsequent to the Report of the Standing Committee on Finance, a notice for introduction of Official Amendments was moved in the Rajya Sabha on November 28, 2013. The Bill is pending consideration of Rajya Sabha, at present.

The proposed Bill seeks to establish the NIDAI for the purpose of issuing Aadhaar numbers to residents of India and to certain other categories of individuals and the manner of authentication of such individuals.

This would enable establishing identity and facilitate access to various benefits and services to eligible individuals.

In a separate reply to the House, the minister said: "More than 9 crore enrollment packet have been rejected so far, that did not meet the quality and de-duplication criteria (for issuing Aadhaar)... A dedicated Fraud Investigation and Analytics team has been deployed to ensure compliance with various fraud detection rules.