Of the 130 million numbers allotted so far, only around 50 million people have received letters
New Delhi: After sparring with the home ministry over biometric data collection and national security concerns, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has found itself in a new row, this time with the state-owned postal network. The authority says India Post is delaying the delivery of letters informing residents of the unique identity numbers allotted to them under the government’s Aadhaar project.
The upshot is that the authority, led by Infosys Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani, is considering handing the job of delivering the letters to private sector firms.
While UIDAI has allotted Aadhaar identities to 130 million residents, only around 50 million have received letters sent by the authority through India Post informing them about their 12-digit unique identification numbers. The letters have been mailed since the the first set of Aadhaar numbers were issued in September 2010. Some 450,000 letters have been returned to UIDAI.
“The backlog is of 8 crore letters as of now,” Kumar Alok, deputy director general of UIDAI, said in an interview on Wednesday.
“We have been receiving a lot of complaints about the letters not reaching the right people or not reaching at all,” he said. “So we are trying to gauge the interest from private players for this job.”
Although India Post has the widest reach in the country, the state-run postal network hasn’t been able to cope with the pressure, Alok said.
India Post, which comes under the ministry of communications and information technology, was engaged by UIDAI in 2010 to print and deliver letters containing Aadhaar numbers. The postal agency was guaranteed revenue of at least Rs. 400 crore for the delivery of the initial 200 million Aadhaar letters, so its loss will be considerable if the job is taken away from it.
The job of printing the letters has already been taken away from the agency which, according to its website, is the world’s largest postal network with 155,015 post offices as on 31 March 2009. Three private sector firms were given the printing job in January-end after India Post wasn’t able to take the load.
UIDAI, which is implementing one of the key projects of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, has had its share of rough weather since it was established in 2009. Most recently, in January, the cabinet had to step in to resolve a conflict between the authority and the National Population Register, which is ultimately overseen by the home ministry, over the collection of biometric data.
UIDAI has the mandate of providing unique identities to 600 million people by 2014, enabling them to access the government’s welfare programmes and services such as banking for financial inclusion. For the government it will serve as a tool to better target social spending by making sure that benefits such as subsidies reach the poor.
UIDAI is now exploring the option of roping in private sector express delivery firms to deliver the Aadhaar letters, Alok said.
The authority invited expressions of interest in mid-February from private companies.
“The crisis should be over in the next three to four months,” he said. “We may split the order” between India Post and private companies to clear the backlog and ensure the letters are delivered on time.
An official at India Post acknowledged that there had been several issues with the delivery of Aadhaar letters and conceded the fact that the state network may lose out on the lucrative contract if private sector firms are enlisted for delivering the letters.
“Yes, there have been delays. They are blaming us for it but they are as much to blame,” said the official, who didn’t want to be identified. “There has been a complete lack of planning from their side.”
When it won the contract for printing and delivering the Aadhaar letters, the order was for 2.5 million letters a year, he said. When the printing job was taken away from India Post, there was no backlog and the department was delivering almost one million Aadhaar letters a day, the official said.
“We thought it was a small order but then the work increased tremendously to almost 3-4 crore letters every year,” he said. “We are being misunderstood as a printing press, which we are not.”
The India Post official said it would be “unethical” for UIDAI to split the order in such a way that private firms get to deliver the letters in cities and towns and India Post is retained only for rural areas. Some 90% of its post offices are located in rural areas.
“Our cost of delivering in rural areas is compensated by the profits made in urban areas. If they split the contract, it will be not be fair,” said the official.
Beyond protesting, there isn’t much that India Post can do. “We being a government department can’t take another government department to court but we will surely protest if this happens,” said the official.
By Surabhi Agarwal
Source : http://www.livemint.com
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