The Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India related issues (CC-UIDAI) today approved the commencement of Phase II of the scheme at an estimated cost of Rs 3023.01 crore. Of this, an amount of Rs. 477.11 crore would be towards recurring establishment expenditure and Rs. 2,545.90 crore would be towards non-recurring project related expenditure.

The estimated cost includes project components for issue of 10 crore UID numbers by March 2011 and recurring establishment costs for the entire project phase of five years ending March 2014.

The first set of 10 crore UID numbers are expected to be issued between August 2010 and March 2011. Thereafter, 600 million UID numbers are expected to be issued within the next three years. The UID project would provide unique numbers to all residents of India.

The UIDAI proposes to collect the demographic and biometric attributes of residents through various agencies of the Central and the State Governments and others who, in normal course of their activities, interact with the residents. These entities are described as "Registrars" of the UIDAI. Examples of such Registrars at the State level are the Departments of Rural Development (for MNREGA) and Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs (for PDS). At the central level these entities could be Banks, LIC and Oil Marketing Companies. As the NPR exercise is also going on, the Registrar General of India will also be an important Registrar for the purpose of collection of demographic and biometric data for the project.