The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is training 48,000 postmen of India Post Payment Bank to go door to door in the remotest parts of the country and link Aadhaar number with mobile numbers, update details, and conduct enrolment of children at the doorstep.
In the second part of the plan, all 150,000 postal officers will be covered, a senior government official said.
The training is being provided as a part of UIDAI’s expansion plans aimed at reaching out to more people and enrolling as many citizens as possible, the official told ET.
To ensure smooth rollout of the plan, UIDAI will provide postmen with the necessary digital gear such as a desktop or laptop-based Aadhar kit to update the necessary details of Aadhar card holders, the official said.
“So far, we have run pilots on IPPB postmen using tablet and mobile-based kit for child enrolment,” the official said. “We will now expand that to enable them to also update Aadhaar details in remote areas using laptop or a desktop.”
Discover the stories of your interest
Apart from IPPB postmen, UIDAI also plans to onboard nearly 13,000 banking correspondents currently working with the Common Service Centre of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the official said.
To ensure that the Aadhaar details collected and updated by IPPB postmen and CSC banking correspondents are updated as quickly as possible, UIDAI also plans to open an Aadhaar Sewa Kendra in each of the 755 districts of the country, the official said.
“We currently have 88 UIDAI Sewa Kendra in 72 cities. The plan is to reach even the remotest corners,” the official said. “We will also approach state governments to provide space in government premises where these sewa kendras can be opened.”
On an average, about 50,000 residents use the self-service portal of Aadhaar daily to update their details such as address, phone number, and other editable details. Most of these changes, however, are done from urban areas as residents in rural areas visit Aadhaar Sewa Kendra to update these details, the official said.
To tackle this problem, UIDAI plans to open ‘mini’ Aadhaar Sewa Kendras in all the 7224 blocks of the country, which will have the necessary set up for linking mobile phone and permanent account number cards to Aadhaar, updating of details such as phone number or address, among others.
“We will have to find state government or municipal premises for both the Aadhaar Sewa Kendra as well as the mini kendras. We are hopeful that the state governments would help UIDAI,” the official said.
In July 2017, UIDAI had asked states to ensure that all enrolments and changes to the Aadhaar, even if done by private agencies, should be only from a government or municipal site from September 2017.
UIDAI is the nodal body responsible for rolling out Aadhaar, the 12-digit biometric identification number, to all residents. Aadhaar numbers have been allocated to 1.33 billion people till date.
