Maharashtra’s UID coverage at 26%; has to meet target of 80% by 2012

Only 26% of the state’s population has enrolled for the Unique Identification (UID) card scheme so far. The target was to enroll 80% of the state’s population by March 2012. It seems impossible to meet the target.

The state launched the UID drive in January 2011.  It registered 1crore citizens in July, taking it to 3,10,51,958  this week. Though the registration has gathered momentum, the registration has reached only 26% as per the data available on November 20, 2011.

The state is second after Andhra Pradesh to register the highest number of enrolment and generation of the cards.  Andhra Pradesh has generated 2.5crore cards and 1.77crore people have got their cards.

Mumbai has the highest number of enrolment of 49.60lakh, followed by Pune with 18.5lakh and Nagpur with the enrolment of 13.82lakh citizens.

“The process slowed down as the Central machinery decided to prefer accuracy over the speed following complaints about registering wrong information,” said an official from the IT department.

“To achieve the target of enrolling 80% citizens, we need to have 15,761 enrollment stations. We only have 4,121 stations,” he said.