Maharashtra's deadline for the completion of the Unique Identification Number (UID) project seems to be escalating even as the Prime Minister is set to launch the project by the month-end from Nandurbar. In the last month, Ashok Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, had said during a function that the State will start issuing UID cards by November 1, 2010.
But Anil Deshmukh, Minister for Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, said here on Monday that the State will start taking the fingerprints of the people between November 2010 and February 2011. “The population of the State is around 10 crore. We will start taking their fingerprints from November 2010. By May next year, we will issue the computerised cards,” he told presspersons. He was also referring to computerised ration cards.
“The same data will be used for both the projects [UID and digitised ration cards]. We will get around Rs.1,200 crore from the Central government for the process [of collecting fingerprints],” he said.
