Delay will affect beneficiaries of direct cash transfer scheme
Even though the Prime Minister has initiated the direct cash transfer to 20 districts in the new year, there is still a backlog of around four crore Aadhaar numbers to be generated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) because of issues with printing of the documents.
Out of 26 schemes scheduled to use the Direct Benefit Transfer, the Government has rolled out seven schemes, including post-matric scholarship for SC, ST and OBC students (three different schemes), pre-matric scholarship for SC students, Indira Gandhi Matrutva Sahayata Yojana, Dhanalakshmi Scheme, stipend to trainees under the scheme of welfare of SC/ST job seekers through coaching-cum-guidance and vocational training.
There are complaints already with many people not getting the unique numbers for at least six months and some even more than a year, even after all the requisite details such as iris scan, fingerprints and age have been collected by UIDAI.
“There is still a backlog of 3-4 crore Aadhaar numbers and some backlog will always remain as it is an ongoing process. We are in the process of clearing this backlog and it will be cleared in a month or two,” Ram Sewak Sharma, Director General and Mission Director, UIDAI, told Business Line.
He said till date the Authority has enrolled 26 crore people and the Government has now authorised enrolling 26 crore in the next phase, from the earlier 20 crore.
Therefore, he said that from now on, the allocation of numbers will be faster and pending numbers will soon be despatched.
Without naming the printing agencies, he said there were three companies that printed the Adhaar documents, each located in Hyderabad, Karnataka and Noida, which will soon stop printing as their tender period is getting over.
In November, Kumar Alok, Deputy Director-General (Administration, Logistics and Contact centres) had told Business Line that there was a backlog of two crore Aadhaar numbers, which was expected to be cleared by December.
Tender floated
Meanwhile, UIDAI has floated a tender for printing of Aadhaar documents on Tuesday requesting proposals (RFP) for which there will be a pre-bid conference on January 21.
The last date for submission of queries will be January 26 and date of issue of clarification will be January 30, it said.
Then the last date for submission of bids will be on February 26 and after all evaluation and matching of discovered rates, the results will be announced on March 14.
UIDAI will give the tender to three companies for printing the Aadhaar documents (card) for distributing the numbers across India for the next two years. The fresh mandate for the Authority is to print and dispatch 92 crore documents by March 2014.
It estimates printing at a rate of around 12 lakh documents per day up to 2014 from 10 lakh per day right now.
The amount of the earnest money deposit will be Rs 25 lakh with the tender fee of Rs 25,000.
Like any other tender, UIDAI has said the companies bidding for it should be registered in India under the Companies Act 1956 and should have an average annual turnover of at least Rs 25 crore in the last three financial years.
ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in
Keywords: Aadhaar, Printing issues, backlog, UIDAI,
