New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday held consultations with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram on the UIDAI issue.
Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said that the Cabinet Committee will meet on Friday on the issue.
The Planning Commission, which is backing UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, and the Home Ministry have been staking claim to carry out the multi-crore project, the matter has now reached the PMO. At stake is several thousand crores of the tax payers’ money.
The Planning Commission is batting for Nandan Nilekani's UIDAI while the Home Ministry says that this is the job of the Registrar General of India.
In a terse letter to the Cabinet secretary, the Home secretary has said the UIDAI sees the MHA data as competition and is holding up the project.
The Home Ministry says it has been mandated to collect data and biometrics and that the UIDAI's original mandate was to issue a unique identity number to the MHA's data.
And while the UIDAI has been mandated to collect data of 20 crore Indians, it now wants to collect data for the entire country.
The UIDAI, meanwhile, has said that sole dependence on the MHA for data will slow down the project.
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