Y.S. RANA , CHANDIGARH—The Chandigarh Administration is on its way bringing government’s offline services to citizen-centric services online. It is now putting all efforts to achieve 100 per cent aadhar enrolment by the end of this year by taking up the tablet driven mission in a big way. As the majority of the left-outs are children, hence, the administration has decided to rope in all Anganwaris in the city that happen to be maximum number of children. City has low Aadhaar enrolment of children below five in the region if the data of UIDAI is of any indication.
While talking to the nodal officer, UIDAI reveals that Chandigarh has over 82,200 children below five year and city has only able to enroll 16,974 for Aadhaar that comes to 20.6 per cent. Haryana tops the list with 36.3 per cent of children below five have been enrolled for Aadhaar in the State followed by Punjab 28.6 per cent and Himachal Pradesh at the bottom with 15.2 per cent in the region. He also further stated that Haryana has 26 lakh children below five and of these, Aadhaar to over 9.42 lakh children have been enrolled followed by Punjab which has 21.33 lakh children below five. Out of these aadhaar of over six lakh has been enrolled.
Himachal Pradesh could only able to enroll 90,901 children out of 5.97 lakh children.
He further said that to achieve the goal in given time frame, 11 Aadhaar enrolment camps have been put on the job to enroll below five children by the Administration since September 16 last. “Work is being taken up in close coordination with the Social Welfare Department and we hope to complete the work by November 16 (the Children Day).”
The step will not only assist in monitoring delivery of all welfare and health-related benefits to an infant but will also help in tracking the child from birth to immunization to school admission and drop-outs. In a bid to achieve 100 per cent enrolment, the state government instead of using the traditional iris scans system on computers and seeking other biometrics documents, the enrolment is being done with the help of tablets and photographs of toddlers are being clicked and uploaded.
“While enrolling a child of 0-5 years in Aadhar, his/her biometrics is not captured. Instead, Aadhaar number and biometrics of parents either father or mother is linked with child’s birth certificate.” said the official
Besides, it will be a tool to serve as data-base information of each child for timely and assured delivery of services, said the official. The Centre has directed all states to speed up registration of infants aged 0-5 for the project through a new, “document-free” application that can be loaded onto a tablet and used anywhere by December this year.
The authority has provided Aadhaar enrolment kits the staff for the purpose with an operator to facilitate registration of birth of an infant along with Aadhaar enrollment. “It will encompass all PHCs, community health centres (CHCs), urban local bodies (ULBs) and civil hospitals at the district headquarter level,” he said.
The left-outs are mostly children in the age group of 0-5 years (nearly 25 lakh). The programme is not only covering the newborns but also children pending for Aadhaar enrolment.
There are an estimated 15 crore infants in India in the age group of 0-5, whose inclusion is essential to meet the target of 100 per cent coverage.
State | Population below 5 years | Aadhaar generated | %Age Aadhaar generation |
Punjab | 2133529 | 610854 | 28.6 |
Chandigarh | 82200 | 16974 | 20.6 |
Haryana | 2599767 | 942943 | 36.3 |
Himachal | 597261 | 90901 | 15.2 |