90% of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Chandigarh covered with Aadhaar

Chandigarh: The Chandigarh Region of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Tuesday said it has issued 55.1 million Aadhaar number to residents of Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and UT Chandigarh, covering almost 90.5 percent of their population. [caption id=“attachment_2229470” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Himachal Pradesh witnessed coverage of 96.2 percent of population, followed by Punjab at 93.4 percent, UT Chandigarh at 93.2 percent and Haryana at 87.3 percent, an official spokesman said. The spokesperson said that to reach out to the left out population who are mostly children in the age group of 0-5 years, regional office is pursuing an aggressive strategy in coordination with state registrars, health departments, women & child development departments and district administrations. Aanganwadi wise left out children have been identified by the respective WCDs of States and UTs. Accordingly route plans have been prepared for covering the left out population of children in a targeted period, he said. More than 100 Aadhaar enrolment camps in the past one year had been organised for marginalised residents by RO Chandigarh as a part of social inclusion programme of UIDAI. “These include almost all orphanages, old age homes, leprosy areas, blind homes, child care institutions etc,” he said. Aadhaar enrolments of all jail inmates in the States/UT under region have also been completed, he further said. The Chandigarh region also remained at the top in all India for the third consecutive year in DBT payments to beneficiaries of identified schemes using Aadhaar Payment Bridge, direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes including Post and Pre Matric Scholarship for SCs, STs and OBCs, MGNREGA, National Social Assistance Program (NSAP) etc. He further said after Jharkhand, Haryana has started Aadhaar enabled bio-metric attendance system (AEBAS) for state government employees while Punjab based Trident group has become the first corporate to leverage Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) to disburse salary to its employees. PTI