States urged to enrol kids for Aadhaar

The Centre has written to all states and Union Territories to enrol children below five years for Aadhaar within a reasonable time.

According to sources in the government, Minister of IT, Law & Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad has written to the Chief Ministers asking them to take steps to enrol children for Aadhaar so that they can be brought under various child-oriented programmes such as pulse polio and vaccination camps.

While the overall Aadhaar registration as on November 30, 2016, is 85 per cent, the registration of population below five years and 5-18 years stands at 32 and 70 per cent respectively. Emphasis is needed on enrolment of children, said an official.

“Many central government departments are in the process of notifying use of Aadhaar as identifier for delivery of subsidy/benefit/services provided by them. So it is important that each individual is issued Aadhaar on time,” the official told BusinessLine .

The official said that Prasad has apprised the State governments of strategies to be adopted for enrolling the remaining population, including children, from time to time. They include procurement of enrolment kits by the states, enrolment camps in Anganwadis and schools and Aadhaar-linked birth registration.

“They (State governments) can also utilise existing IT infrastructure for Aadhaar enrolment, facilitating non-state registrars to open permanent enrolment centres (PECs), use of enrolments kits of the office of Registrar General of India by states covered by National Population Register,” the official said.

According to the Centre’s plan, all Centrally funded schemes are to be brought under Aadhaar-based direct benefit transfer, including child-oriented schemes such as Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan and the mid-day meal scheme.

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