Compliance with ID scheme will be voluntary: Nilekani

While Nandan Nilekani, the head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, expects 60 million Indians to have unique ID numbers or UID in the next four or five years, he clarified that compliance with the system would be voluntary and not mandatory.

The first IUD cards are likely to be handed out in the next 12-14 months. The project is being carried out is mainly to enable financial inclusion in the country and bring uniformity, he said at a FICCI-Indian Banks Association conference in Mumbai, yesterday.

The UID project will create a mass database with demographic and biometric information that can be used by banks and insurance companies. It will also help authorities in issuing passports, ration cards, and other such documents. These entities would be the partners in the UID project, Nilekani told the banking conference.

''The UID is just an instrument to identify. It will also identify a person online through a central system across the country. The authenticity of an individual will be done only with a 'yes' or 'no' and so privacy of an individual will be maintained,'' said Nilekani.

The partners can then go ahead and do additional know your consumers (KYC) according to their requirements. A UID will not provide any specific category, religion or entitlements for an individual and therefore partners will need to go through the additional process on their own, he added.

Nilekani added that the master database will be created after combining the databases of multiple agencies. The UIDAI will partner with multiple entities like states (for food supply through ration shops, panchayat and education), the oil ministry (domestic gas agencies, oil companies), health insurance, and banks.