With the first phase of UIDAI aiming to enrol 600 million residents of the country into its database in next four years and its possible use in improving the Public Distribution System, the Authority Chairman Nandan Nilekani today said the journey will be "long" and "tough".

Nilekani expressed satisfaction over the pace of the project and said the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was on "the right track".

The Authority which has been set up to provide a unique 12 digit number to each resident of the country aims to roll out the first number between August 2010 to February 2011.

"It is a very complex project and what we are going to do now (issuance of first Aadhaar number) is only a start. We have promised that we will have 600 million enroled in the next four and half years. It is going to be a long tough journey, the former chief of IT giant Infosys said on the sidelines of a function here.

Talking about the recently introduced working paper on role of the 12 digit unique number 'Aadhaar' in revamping Public Distribution System, Nilekani said, "PDS reform is a very important priority for the government and we think that if we able to give every resident a 'Aadhaar' number, that will help in reducing duplicates and fraud in the database of people.

"That is one part. The other part is that if you can bring in online authentication at the point of service delivery then you can make it a demand led system. As in when people get ration, it is reduced from the inventory of the PDS which can be then replenished from the supply chain. So basically it becomes a demand-led model. It also gives the person the choice to go to any PDS shop," he said.