Data collection exercise under the unidque identity project, 'AAdhaar', being carried out by Smaarftech Technologies Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Glodyne Technoserve Ltd, has begun in the Bind block in Bihar's Nalanda district, Project Director of STPL Binod Mishra said today.

The UID project caters to the identity and security of the poor and marginalised in the country and STPL has been assigned to do the job in Bihar, Mishra said.

"This field exercise is first of its kind in the country where biometric data of 20,000 enrollees would be collected on the proof of concept phase of the project and Bihar, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have been selected after a countrywide survey for carrying out the Proof of Concept (POC) study," Mishra said.

The case of Bihar is unique as it will not be a stand alone exercise but will dove-tail the existing e-shakti project which has been running for the past one and a half year in the state, he said, adding it will be a mini-project based on e-shakti model with components ranging from awareness campaigns, training of field personnel and data collection.

Biometric data to be captured by the team would include finger prints of all ten fingers, photographs of the face and IRIS image of all those who get registered.