IT vendors including Accenture-NEC, L1 ID and MSatyam-Morpho lock horns with Unique ID Authority

NEW DELHI: Biometric vendors de-duplicating Aadhaar numbers have refused to work with Unique ID Authority of India after finishing their contract, next month. The vendors were eliminating duplicate or redundant information in the Aadhaar IDs at the price of Rs 2.75 per number fixed with the agency.

The deadlock over price threatens to create an uncertainty for the second phase of enrollments, which starts post-April, for about 40 crore citizens, even as new service provider is yet to come on board and take over UIDAI's IT operations. Three consortiums, led by Accenture-NEC, L1 ID Solutions and Mahindra Satyam-Morpho, are providing the biometric de-duplication for the Aadhaar scheme for about 20 crore Indian residents.

All the IT consortiums have told the UIDAI to revise charges due to a hike in price by their biometric partners. "There are only four biometric providers present in India. All of them have hiked costs due to high imports costs, leading us to quote a price of Rs 8 per number," said an official of an existing provider.

Less than six companies in the world are capable of providing biometric solutions at a large scale, and at high quality standards. Biometric companies NEC, L1, Morpho and Cogent passed the UIDAI's biometric standard test, and were eligible to be partnered by any IT vendor. Some others had failed the standard test.

A UIDAI spokesperson did not revert on ET's queries as to the plan to run operations post-April without a biometric vendor. The official, however, added on price hike that vendors will have to negotiate it with their registrars.

HCL Infosystems, which has emerged as the lowest financial bidder for the managed service provider contract, has been learnt to have quoted a price of Rs 2.75 per number to the government in its bid. The MSP contract is to store data, de-duplicate and issue Aadhaar numbers for 70 crore people. "Even a price hike of 1 will mean a hit of Rs 70 crore on HCL Infosystems' balance sheet," said another IT vendor who had backed out from bidding for the MSP contract.

"We are requesting the government to let existing biometric providers work with MSP. Handing over the private data of citizens in the hands of an untested technology might pose great risk," said a biometric vendor. "Trial and error will create backlog," he added.

HCL Infosystems doesn't have its own IP on biometrics and is learnt to have partnered with Morpho for biometrics. About 13.5 crore people have been issued Aadhaar numbers, and the rest will be issued over coming weeks. UIDAI plans to start the next phase of enrolling additional 40 crore people by June 2013, from next month.