In a bid to clear confusion and duplication between the National Population Register (NPR) and Aadhaar cards, the NDA government has decided to explore the possibility of a synergy between the two ambitious projects of the previous UPA government.
The issue was discussed at a high-level meeting, convened by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and attended by Law and Justice and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Minister of State for Planning Rao Inderjit Singh. The meeting discussed how the two could be made “complementary.”
“The issue will now be discussed by officials of all Ministries concerned and a way will be found soon,” Mr. Singh told journalists later.
The Home Ministry has already suggested that the NPR and Aadhaar schemes be merged under the Registrar General of India (RGI) or division of work between the two should be in such a way that enrolment is done entirely by NPR while the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs Aadhaar, carries out deduplication ahead of generating the unique number. The UIDAI was set up by the UPA government in 2009 under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani. It comes under the Planning Commission.
The Home Minister has already set a three-year deadline to identify genuine Indian citizens through the NPR project. The government also wants enumerators to conduct door-to-door verification and issue NPR cards to Indian nationals only.
It is also planning to link NPR to voting rights which would mean that voter ID cards would not be the sole document for eligibility to vote, officials said.
