200 agencies to enroll citizens for UID

NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Thursday released the list of its empanelled enrolment agencies, who will carry out enrolment of citizens into the UID system. The UIDAI’s registrars including States, Union Territories and public bodies may enlist the empanelled agencies to enrol residents for Aadhaar- the UIDAI’s unique 12 digit number.

The list includes 200 odd small and medium IT, advertising and financial and trading firms spread across India. Companies like 4GID Solutions, Alankit Finsec, Comat Technologies, Datasoft, CSS, Glodyne, Eagle Press, Deep Advertising, Nexus Connexions, Spanco, UTI Technolgy are listed as empanelled.

UIDAI’s director general RS Sharma said: “Enrolment agencies will capture residents’ demographic and biometric details on behalf of the registrars and send them to the UIDAI’s central database. Based on this information the Authority will then issue the residents their Aadhaar.”

The UIDAI had called for a Request for Empanelment (RFE) to empanel the agencies. The offers received in response to this RFE were checked for eligibility and evaluated on criteria like current operations of the operator, financial net worth and turnover. “Registrars can also appoint enrolment agencies besides those empanelled by UIDAI, as long as they satisfy the eligibility criteria laid down in the RFE,” Mr Sharma added.

The empanelment of the agencies is valid up to a period of one year for enrolling of citizens under Aadhaar sceheme. The UIDAI plans to issue unique ID numbers by February 2011 in the first phase.