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-The Financial Express
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<em>UIDAI validates digital counterpart to tackle problem of letters lost in transit.</em>
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To overcome the unending complaints of Aadhaar letters being lost in transit by India Post, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has decided to validate &quot;e-aadhaar&quot; as a secured electronic document &quot;to be treated on a par with the printed Aadhaar letter&quot;.
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In an office memorandum issued on March 28 by UIDAI's Assistant Director General A Kharkwal, it has been noted that the &quot;Information Technology Act, 2000 provides for legal recognition of electronic records with digital signatures&quot;.
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&quot;The issue has been considered and it has been decided that e-aadhaar is to be treated as a valid document in view of the fact that it has been digitally certified... The e-aadhaar document is digitally signed using certificate issued by NIC, as per the IT Act, 2000,&quot; the memorandum read.
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&quot;Further, all the data printed in e-aadhaar letter is the same as that printed in Aadhaar letter. In view of the above, e-aadhaar is a valid and secured electronic document which should be treated on a par with printed Aadhaar letter,&quot; the memorandum stated.
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The Delhi government, as well as other state governments, had voiced concerns over loss of Aadhaar letters during transit - Newsline had reported that many were being dumped in bulk at certain places. India Post had also acknowledged that it struggled to deal with bulk orders during Phase I of the project, owing to shortage of manpower and equipment.
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The UIDAI notification stated that a &quot;resident portal&quot; has been launched to enable the residents to download their &quot;e-aadhaar&quot;, an electronically generated letter, from the UIDAI's website.
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&quot;In addition, Common Service Centers (CSC) that have been set up in States are also catering to the needs of the residents in providing e-aadhaar. This requirement has been established for facilitating process of communication of Aadhaar numbers, especially when in a number of cases Aadhaar letters could not reach the residents due to one reason or the other,&quot; the UIDAI notification said.
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Till date, 31,06,02,719 residents have already been issued their Aadhaar numbers after the target to enrol 40 crore residents in 18 states and Union Territories began in April 2012.
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