The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issued an order today, releasing the list of enrolment agencies, empanelled with it to carry out enrolment into the UID system. The UIDAI’s registrars including States, Union Territories and public bodies can enlist the empanelled agencies to enrol residents for Aadhaar- the UIDAI’s unique 12 digit number.

UIDAI DG, Mr. R.S. Sharma said that, “the enrolment agencies will capture residents’ demographic and biometric details on behalf of the registrars and send them to the UIDAI’s central database. Based on this information the Authority will then issue the residents their Aadhaar.”

The UIDAI had called for a Request for Empanelment (RFE) to empanel the agencies. The offers received in response to this RFE were checked for eligibility and evaluated on criteria like current operations of the operator, financial net worth and turnover. Mr. Sharma also added that, “the registrars can also appoint enrolment agencies besides those empanelled by UIDAI, as long as they satisfy the eligibility criteria laid down in the RFE.” The list of agencies who have qualified will be available on the UIDAI website: http://uidai.gov.in/.

The empanelment of the agencies is valid up to 31st July, 2011 and is subject to renewal according to the procedure which shall be prescribed by UIDAI in due course of time. This was the first round in the series of periodic empanelment the UIDAI proposes to do.