Security staff at Yojana Bhavan, the Planning Commission office, were in for a surprise on Thursday morning.
Security staff at Yojana Bhavan, the Planning Commission office, were in for a surprise on Thursday morning. Precisely at 10.15am, a full 45 minutes before he was due, walked in Nandan Nilekani, the newly-appointed chief of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI). Even at Infosys, he used to start work as early as 7.30am.
While rumours abound that he will get a plush set of rooms for his office, either at the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building at Connaught Place or at Vigyan Bhavan, for the time being he assumed office at borrowed digs, an office recently vacated by former Planning Commission member BL Mungekar, four doors away from deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
“These are early days, I am assembling my team,” he said. His team is expected to have at least 40 private sector IT professionals and will be sourced, according to Nilekani, “globally, both from government and the private sector. I have met many government officials who have innovative ideas, all are welcome.”
Giving details of the project, he made it clear that he would give out unique numbers and set up a platform from which the government could issue identity cards to residents of the country.
“We are looking at biometric identification, it could be fingerprints or retina identification. There are several options, but we will use the best technology,” he added.
“The identification will be a tool to empower people, especially migrants who can use this unique identification to open bank accounts, get public distribution system foodgrains and start over wherever they may move,” he said.
He added that taking an identification number would be voluntary. Allotted Rs120 crore in the Union budget, Nilekani said the home ministry had been given a deadline of 12 to 18 months to complete the project.
Sources added that the first pilot project for identification numbers could be in Karnataka, Nilekani’s home state.
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