Aadhaar Seva Kendra was inaugurated by Rajeev Chandrasekhar and General (Dr) V.K Singh (Retd) at Ghaziabad, U.P.
Rs 1.78 lac crore – savings made to public exchequer owing to use of Aadhaar and DBT : Rajeev Chandrasekhar
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and Electronics & Information Technology and General (Dr) V.K Singh (Retd), Minister of State for Road Transport & Highways and Civil Aviation jointly inaugurated the 5th Aadhaar Seva Kendra in UP at Ghaziabad today. The ASK has the capacity to handle requests from 1000 residents per day.
On this occasion, Rajeev Chandrasekhar congratulated everyone and said that this public facility is dedicated purely to the residents of Ghaziabad. He mentioned his old connection with the city as he spent 2 years of his life, as a student, staying at the Hindon airbase, since his father was an officer in the Indian Airforce.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar spoke about the vision of PM Narendra Modi on Digital India which lays out 3 broad outcomes for Technology to achieve in a developing country like India. These are:-
- Technology to transform the lives of citizens
- To expand Economic opportunities
- To create strategic capabilities in certain technologies
Rajeev Chandrasekhar highlighted the achievements of the Digital India Campaign over the last 6 years and remarked that 100 paise released from the Government of India towards the welfare of poor and needy, now reach into their accounts at the click of a button. This he contrasted with the statement given by a former PM back in the ’80s where he admitted that only 15 paise out of 100 paise released by the Central Government reaches the beneficiaries.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar also cited the example of an indigenously developed Cowin platform that has facilitated vaccination of over 100 crore people in India and is now the most sought after platform among various counties for managing their vaccination programme.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar credited the success of this transformation to the vision of PM Narendra Modi towards the use of technology for Direct benefit transfer by making use of the Aadhaar that has plugged all leakages from the system and prevented corruption.
Talking about Aadhaar, he said that around 313 central government schemes have been notified to use Aadhaar for leak-proof delivery of various social welfare benefits like PM-KISAN, PM Aawaas Yojana, PM Jan Arogya Yojana, PAHAL, MGNREGA, National Social Security Assistance Programme, PDS (in-kind benefits through Aadhaar authentication)etc.
He later added that the savings made to the public exchequer owing to the use of Aadhaar and DBT, primarily due to weeding out of fake and duplicate beneficiaries, have been estimated to be to the tune of Rupees 1.78 lakh crores (as of Mar 2020; as per DBT Mission, Cabinet Secretariat).
Speaking on the occasion General (Dr) V.K Singh (Retd) thanked the government for starting the ASK in Ghaziabad. He said that this centre will make aadhaar related services for residents easy. Now people can update their aadhaar and also enrol for Aadhaar at the centre.
Shri Saurav Garg, CEO of UIDAI said that UIDAI plans to operate 166 ASKs in 122 cities throughout India. So far establishment of 58 ASKs completed and started functioning. All the ASKs are air-conditioned, designed with adequate seating capacity and also Divyang friendly.
He emphasized that UIDAI is moving forward by making aadhaar services easier for citizens. In this direction, we are focusing on online aadhaar updation services where residents can update their aadhaar using the mobile app and also by visiting the self-service update portal of UIDAI he added.
Deputy Director-General UIDAI, Regional Office Lucknow, Shri Prasant Kumar Singh said that new ASKs are also planned for Gorakhpur, Kanpur & Greater Noida and are likely to be completed during the current financial year itself.
Speaking on the occasion Shri Nitish Sinha, ADG, UIDAI RO Lucknow said that this is the 5th Aadhaar Seva Kendra in UP after Agra, Lucknow, Prayagraj & Meerut. He further said that the dry run has started in ASKs at Gonda & Varanasi and very soon the dry run will start at Moradabad & Saharanpur.
UP has achieved an Aadhaar saturation level of 90.66% (with respect to the projected population of 2021).
To provide Aadhaar related services, 10,400+ Aadhaar kits are functional in UP (which includes 2700+ CSC BCs and 3000+ IPPB CELC Kits). These kits have carried approximately 5.17 Lakhs new Aadhaar enrolment and 22 Lakhs updates during last month.
In the Ghaziabad district itself, 145 Aadhaar kits are functional (which includes 21 CSC BCs and 38 IPPB CELC Kits). These kits have carried approximately 9 thousand new Aadhaar enrolments and 33 thousand updates during last month.
Disclaimer : This is an official press release by PIB.
