Enrolment to Aadhaar begins

Arjun Raghunath
The New Indian Express
23 Feb 2011

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Better late than never. After months of dilly-dallying, enrolment to the nation’s much-hyped Unique Identification (UID) project, popularly known as Aadhaar, will begin in Kerala on Thursday.

The launch of Aadhaar has been held up in the state over the past several months owing to certain issues, including the use of proprietary software for the project and concerns raised by various sections over the privacy of the personal data of individuals.

Many states, including the Communist-ruled Tripura and West Bengal, had already launched the enrolment to the project that aims at collecting personal and biometric details of all citizens and providing unique identification number to each individual.

Owing to mounting pressure from a section that is opposed to Aadhaar for ‘ethical and ideological’ reasons, the Kerala Government was forced to stall the launch of the project even in the last minute. Finally, on Tuesday, the Government gave the go-ahead after the political leadership waved the green flag.

"We had received various memorandums raising concerns about the Aadhaar project and hence we had to rethink before giving the go ahead," sources at the Chief Minister’s Office said.

The 2,000-odd Akshaya centres will be enrolling the citizens to the project. "We are all set to start the enrolment process on February 24. More than 200 Akshaya entrepreneurs had already undergone training from the UID Authority. We target to enrol at least 1.5 crore people in another 10 months," said Akshaya Director Korath V Mathew.

The initial roadblock for Aadhaar’s launch in Kerala was that the software used for the enrolment was proprietary software and it was against the free and open sources software policy of the state. The UID Authority had sorted out the issue by providing FOSS-based applications.

In the meantime, concerns about the privacy of Aadhaar had come up.

"Our major concern is with regard to the privacy of the information, including biometric details, of individuals that are being gathered. It is not limited to the state, but the concern has gathered momentum at the national level," said Free Software Foundation secretary Arun Madhavan.

There are also concerns about enrolment of students through the IT@School as a section feel that the information regarding students were being collected without their permission. However, IT Department sources said that there would be no compulsion on anyone to enrol in Aadhaar.

The Akshaya centres are expected to fetch a considerable revenue from the UID project as the UID Authority would be paying around Rs 35 for enrolling each person. The UID Authority had already allotted Rs 15 crore to the state.

The State Bank of Travancore is also planning to launch enrolment to Aadhaar in the state.