ID projects

A governmental group is looking at how to converge two major national identification projects, Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said on Friday. The two projects are the unique identification project, which Nilekani leads and comes under the Planning Commission, and the National Population Register project, being undertaken by the registrar-general of India that comes under the home ministry. Both initiatives, in many ways, duplicate each other’s work. Home minister P Chidambaram has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to instruct the Planning Commission to bring a note to the cabinet on the status of UIDAI, so that there is clarity on which agency will perform the task of capturing the population’s biometric data. Nilekani declined to say anything on the controversy, other than that the Centre is discussing the various issues raised, both by the home ministry and the parliamentary standing committee on finance.