Following complaints about agents doing the rounds of Aadhaar enrolment centres seeking money from applicants, the state government and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) have blacklisted around 300 such errant operators in Mumbai.
“Around 300 operators have been blacklisted in Mumbai,” said Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Deputy Director General, UIDAI, adding that this had been done because of complaints regarding money being sought from applicants, proliferation of agents at centres, irregularities and quality issues.
Operators were also being suspended and police action was being taken in appropriate cases. “We have a zero tolerance on this,” said Pandey, adding that even FIRs had been filed in some cases. He pointed out that the Aadhaar registration was done free of cost.
Pandey said the blacklisted operators would be “removed from the Aadhaar ecosystem” to ensure that they would not be able to work on the project in other states.
Also, with citizens crowding registration centres, Pandey said they would enrol LPG consumers and scholarship holders in Mumbai and Pune on priority basis till March 15.
The LPG connection holders in five districts — Mumbai, Pune, Amravati, Wardha and Nandurbar — are supposed to enrol for Aadhaar and give their UIDAI numbers to their gas agency by March 15 for the direct transfer of subsidy into bank accounts failing which, they may need to purchase cylinders at market prices.
He requested people who were not covered by these schemes to wait and get enrolled as per their convenience by December 2013 and pointed out that the registration was a continuous process with the state due to have 2,000 permanent centres forever.
Dhaval Kulkarni l @dhavalkulkarni
