Government declares UID and NPR enrolment across India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: In written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, R.P.N.Singh, Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs stated, the collection of demographic data for creation of NPR has already been completed for the entire country through house-to-house enumeration. Scanning of all filled-in NPR schedule (i.e., approximately 27 crore) has also been done.

The National Population Register (NPR) is a Register of all usual residents in the country. It would have details of specific characteristics of each usual resident. The NPR would also have photograph, 10 fingerprints and IRIS of all usual residents who are of age 5 years and above.

The objective of creation of NPR is to net all usual residents of the country at a given point of time. The de-duplication and generation of Aadhaar number by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a part of NPR process.

As per the Government figures, "Data digitization of more than 117 crore population (97 percent) has been completed. Biometric enrolment of more than 13.42 crore population (12.33 percent) is over. The biometric data of 9.15 crore persons have been sent to UIDAI and Aadhaar number has been generated for 5.2 crore persons. UIDAI, under Planning Commission, is mandated to de-duplicate and generate a unique identity number 'Aadhaar', which is communicated to the residents through a letter, commonly known as Aadhaar Card.

As on 31.03.2013, a total of 31.19 crore Aadhaar numbers have been generated by the UIDAI, which also includes the 5.2 crore Aadhaar generated through NPR," says an official release issued by the Government.

"To minimize the duplication of efforts between NPR and UIDAI, the Government has decided that NPR enrolments will continue as envisaged but during the course of NPR biometric enrolment, a person indicates she/he is already enrolled for Aadhaar, the biometric data will not be captured for NPR. Instead the Aadhaar number will be recorded in NPR and the biometric data will be sourced from the UIDAI," added the release.