‘No overlap between Aadhaar, NPR’

Even as the Aadhaar Act 2016 has come into force after Parliament passed it last month, which makes citizens having this enrolment as recipients of certain subsidies and benefits, the government has, at the same time, made it clear that there won’t be any overlap between registration under Aadhaar and enrolment under the National Population Register (NPR).

The government has sought to quash rising speculation regarding the two enrolment programmes with similar details, leading to wastage of resources and needless overlap.

While both the processes have been underway since the UPA government’s tenure, with the passage of the act, the enrolment under Aadhaar has received legislative backing, raising doubts about the validity of registrations under NPR.

According to official sources, the ministry of planning has made it quite clear that a proper bifurcation had been done during the UPA regime itself (as the Aadhaar Act is actually a thinly-disguised version of the UPA’s National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 which could not be passed in the 15th Lok Sabha and had subsequently lapsed) of areas to be covered under Aadhaar and NPR.

The NDA government revived the 2010 bill and got it passed as Aadhaar Act 2016.

Sources privy to the development said that while UIDAI has been allotted 24 states for Aadhaar enrolment, the remaining states are being covered by NPR.

In fact, they added, that if during the course of enrolment, a person indicates that he or she is already enrolled for Aadhaar, biometric data will not be collected by NPR and data will be collected from UIDAI.

In addition to this, in case there is any discrepancy between NPR and UIDAI databases, NPR data will prevail.

Similarly, if data and biometrics have been first captured for NPR, then UIDAI will accept the same, sources added.