Manmohan Singh constitutes UIDAI Council

New Delhi, Aug.3 (ANI): The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, has constituted a Council under his chairmanship to advice the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and ensure coordination between the Ministries, stakeholders and partners.

The council members are

1. Pranab Mukherjee, Minister of Finance.

2. Sharad Pawar, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution

3. P. Chidambaram, Minister of Home Affairs

4. S.M. Krishna, Minister of External Affairs

5. M. Veerappa Moily, Minister of Law and Justice

6. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development

7. C.P .Joshi Minister of Rural Development and Minister of Panchayati Raj

8. Mallikarjun Kharge, Minister of Labour and Employment

9. A. Raja, Minister of Communicationsand Information Technology

10.Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission

11.Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI

The Council will advice the UIDAI on the programme, methodology and implementation to ensure coordination between ministries, departments, stakeholders and partners.

The council will also identify specific milestones for early completion of the project.

To begin with, UIDAI will issue numbers to all voters by building on the current electoral data. Progressively, other people, including those below 18 years, will be added to the list. Once this is done, it is expected to replace several other identification cards issued by the government.

Currently, central and state governments issue many cards including PAN cards, drivers licences, passports, ration cards and provident fund numbers.

The pilot project is expected to issue the first few cards within an year. The unique identity scheme will be overseen by an empowered group. The empowered group will have representatives from all crucial ministries like the home Ministry, finance ministry, law ministry and rural development ministry.

The government wants to give benefits to targeted groups but does not have a consolidated database, UIDAI will be responsible for this data so that if the government wants to provide food security to the weakest section, it can pull out information from the newly set-up authority and disburse benefits to the targeted group.

The challenge for chairman Nandan Nilekani will be to provide these cards to a billion plus people in three years. (ANI)