Haryana has signed a pact with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for the implementation of the project to issue identification numbers to residents, with the state intending to link up all e-governance applications to its database.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Haryana Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary, Information Technology, Y S Malik and the Director General, UIDAI, R S Sharma.

With this, the UIDAI had signed MoU with a total of 11 states and three Union Territories across the country, according to an official release here.

UIDAI would issue unique identification numbers to the residents of the country based on the demographic and biometric data of the individual.

Malik said that Haryana Government would work closely with UIDAI to implement the UID project in the state.

He said that Haryana Government intends to link up all its eGovernance applications using the UIDAI database, in order to avoid duplication, inconsistent and outdated information and significantly reduce identity frauds in delivering Government services.

It will also make it easy for citizens to obtain services and to allow government agencies to function with greater speed and accuracy.

"The most important step would be the enrolment and the de-duplication of resident information. During enrolment, demographic and biometric details of all the residents of the state would be collected in accordance with UIDAI standards and guidelines," Malik said.

These would include all the ten finger prints as well as both iris images for the applicable age groups.

The first number would be issued between August 2010 to February 2011.

Malik said that "de-duplication" would be performed primarily using UIDAI's centralised facilities that were expected to be operational by later this year.

Once this was done, the state expects this to be rich and authentic source of resident information which could be used by all the state departments.

"A database with such authentic information would be of immense help in delivery of beneficiary related citizen services. The process could reduce the burden of the citizens and government departments significantly by eliminating many steps of proving or verifying identity, residence among others," he said.

R S Sharma said UID numbers would be issued to eliminate duplicate and fake identities which could be verified and authenticated in an easy, cost effective way.

Over five years, the Authority plans to issue 600 million UIDs.