Meet on UIDAI, home ministry turf war to resume Friday

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today led a meeting with Unique Identity Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani, home minister P Chidambaram, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, and other senior members of the government over the issue of who would be responsible for collection of citizens' data under the ambitious UID programme.

However there was no immediate resolution of the turf war between Chidambaram's ministry of home affairs and Nilekani's UIDAI. The prime minister has scheduled a cabinet meeting for Friday after the Republic Day break.

While the Registrar General of India under the home ministry is mandated to carry out a regular census, the UIDAI, which comes under the Planning Commission's authority, has been collecting its own data on Indian residents with different parameters.

"I think we have come to an agreement on how both the projects can proceed together without difficulty ... the cabinet committee (on UIDAI) was rescheduled and will happen on Friday. We are quite hopeful that we will have a resolution of these issues in that meeting," Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told newspersons after the meeting.

Besides Ahluwalia, today's meeting was also attended by National Security Advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon.