By Sumir Karmakar
Under the Aadhaar project, led by IT honcho Nandan Nilekani, every resident across India will be provided with a 12-digit unique identification number which will serve as address proof anywhere in the country.
Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, however, are yet to give the green signal to the Identification Authority to start enrolment, citing various problems, while the process is moving at snail’s pace in Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram.
Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh want to conduct the process themselves and not through the Planning Commission-supported Identification Authority.
Assam, on the other hand, wants to complete its National Register of Citizens project first — ascertain who the genuine citizens are — before embarking on the identification process.
Tripura is way ahead in the implementation of the project in the region and has completed 80 per cent of enrolment, while Sikkim has crossed the one-lakh mark since the project was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in September 2010.
Debajit Khound, assistant director general of Identification Authority’s regional office here, said that the progress of the Aadhaar project was very slow in most states of the Northeast.
“Assam had issued a notification to allow us to start the enrolment in five districts initially but thereafter we were informed not to go ahead with the process. The government stated that the enrolment process would create problems, as it required identity proofs of residents. The government also informed us that it would carry out the enrolment process itself,” he said.
“Similarly in Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, we are yet to receive the green signal from the state governments. It is almost certain that we will miss the initial mandate to complete the enrolment by March 2012,” he said.
According to statistics ava-ilable, Tripura leads the enrolment, with 2,072,902 Aadhaar cards being issued, followed by 1,27,666 cards in Sikkim.
Manipur has enrolled 38,329 residents while in Nagaland and Assam, identification cards has been issued to 6,851 and 6,372 residents respectively.
“In Assam, some enrolments were done by two agencies in Guwahati without our knowledge and later we stopped the process as we are yet to get permission from the government. But those who have received their cards will not be cancelled as they were issued after valid documents were produced,” Khound said.
The Identification Authority had issued the first Aadhaar number to Ranjna Sadashiv Sonwane, a tribal woman from Tembhali village in Maharashtra.
The ambitious project aims to issue 600 million Aadhaar numbers in the next four years to residents across the country.
After the Identification Authority’s mandate expires, the enrolment process would be looked after by the Registrar General of India with the help of state governments and other agencies.
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