Aadhaar
not mandatory to avail Govt services : Rajeev Shukla
"Aadhaar card is not
mandatory to avail Government services like opening basic (Bank) accounts,
admissions in schools, obtaining Passport etc by any individual," Planning
Minister Rajeev Shukla said in written reply to Rajya Sabha.
However, according to the
Minister, the consumers would be required to seed their Aadhaar number with
their Bank account to avail subsidy on domestic cooking gas (LPG) after three
months from the launch of Direct Benefit Transfer (for LPG) in their
area.
The government has launched the
DBT for LPG consumers in 20 districts in the country. There are plans to launch
the DBT in other parts of the country.
The Minister clarified that
Aadhaar is not mandatory for receiving domestic LPG cylinder at market
determined price.
Meanwhile, in another written
reply to the upper House, Shukla informed that as on July 26 this year, the
total number of Aadhaar enrollments generated was 39.36 crore and the number of
enrollment packets under process was 42.65 crore.
Shukla also said that about 1.44
crore Aadhaar numbers have been generated in Delhi as on July 26, 2013.
He assured the House that there
is no possibility of enrollment agencies misusing the collected data as the
moment enrollment process in respect of an individual is completed, the data
captured by the agency is encrypted and stored in a digitally encrypted format.
The Minister also informed the
House that as many as 1,051 permanent enrollment centres were there in the
states where UIDAI is enrolling residents.
The facilities available at these
centres include new enrollment, biometric updates, demographic updates,
e-aadhaar letters printing, status check, lost EID/UID enrollments and
re-enrolments.
Unique Identification Authority
of India (UIDAI), implementing Aadhaar project, has plans to increase the
number of these centres to about 2,000 in 18 states and union territories by
March 2014.
Source
: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com