Common Service Centres, the government-run digital kiosks, are set to open one new centre in each district — close to 700 centres by next year — to restart Aadhaar enrolment and updation services, a top government official told ET. The centres, mostly in far flung areas, were stopped from providing the services after a security issue two years ago.
Dinesh Tyagi, CEO of the CSC e-Governance Services, told ET that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which runs the Aadhaar programme, has approved a proposal to restart the services. The services will, however, only be provided at CSCs own offices for now and not through its entire network of 3,60,000 managed centres. Currently, there is one CSC office in every state and the government is gearing up to open a new centre in each district.
“These offices will be modelled after the Aadhaar Seva Kendra in terms of facilities as well as ensuring highest standards of security for the unique identity number,” Tyagi said.
The centres will be run by officials who are on the rolls of the CSC e-Governance Services, which is under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, and not by CSCs run by an independent network of village level entrepreneurs, he added.
The UIDAI has put certain conditions, such as a minimum number of terminals and personnel in order to qualify for such services. “They may be viable in some areas, but not viable in others, so we are discussing this with UIDAI,” he said.
The enrolment and updation of the 12-digit unique identity number through CSCs was a big advantage for UIDAI since the network of CSCs had become vast, especially in villages. These services were also a big revenue generator for CSCs.
ET reported earlier this year that Anurag Singh Thakur, the former head of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, had written to Minister of Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad asking to restart Aadhaar services across CSCs.
Discontinuation of such work through village-level digital kiosks had caused inconvenience to the public, Thakur had said.
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