Kerala gearing up for UID enrolment

Oct, 12

Aimed at enrolling one-third of the state's population by March 2011, the Unique Identification (UID) project would be rolled out in the state shortly.

Though met with certain initial hiccups, the project is expected to be in full throttle as the Akshaya e-Kendras across the state as well as Keltron are gearing up for the enrollment process. The target is to enroll one crore persons by the first quarter of next year, said sources.

While the 2000 odd Akshaya e-Kendras would collect the data from the general public, the Keltron would mainly focus on Government offices and urban areas. As many as 50 lakh students in the State would be registered by Keltron with the support of IT@School. The State IT Department has been appointed as the registrar for the UID projectin the state and the Kerala State IT Mission is the nodal agency.

IT Department sources said that the project is slightly off the actual schedule in the State owing to the delay on the part of the State Government is finalising the state-specific data to be collected from each individual in the state.

The UID Authority of India had listed out as set of details, including the iris identification and finger print, to be collected from each individual which is referred to as Know Your Residence (KYR) details. Apart this, in each state governments could prescribe a set of state-specific information pertaining to an individual, referred to as KYR plus, which would also be incorporated with the UID database. The data thus collected may be later used by the state.

IT Mission Director Ishita Roy said that besides some technical issues all the preparation for enrolling to UID are in the final stages in the state.

While the enrollment process had already begun in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka the preparations are in the final stages. Enrollment has also begun in Maharashtra.

Though the UID Authority had provided the application for the data collection which is based on proprietary software, the State is developing a Linux-based application. The Akshaya and Keltron would be procuring the hardware, including iris scanner and finger print scanner. The data collected would be uploaded to the UID Authority data base in Bangalore.

Rolling out of the UID project would also brighten the prospects of the Akshaya entrepreneurs in the state as it would earn considerable returns to them.

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