Government proposes to make Aadhaar card compulsory for these two important services

Aadhar cards (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The government, on Tuesday, has proposed to make Aadhaar card compulsory for filing income tax return and applying for Permanent Account Number (PAN). Meanwhile, from April 1, 'Aadhar' enabled biometric attendance will become mandatory for teachers and other employees in all the government aided colleges of Haryana. Principals of government aided colleges have been directed to purchase at least 10 Aadhar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) machines with wi-fi model through HARTRON within a week, a spokesman of the state government's higher education department said here. He added that college authorities can contact District Information Officer, National Informatics Centre (NIC) for procedural inputs required to create database of all teaching and non-teaching employees within seven days. Principals have been directed to ensure timely installation of machines and all officers and officials of the colleges should mark attendance through AEBAS only. They have also been asked to provide the name, designation, email-id and mobile number of a nodal technical officer, designated for this purpose by the college. The compliance report would have to be sent to the office of Higher Education Department positively by March 25, 2017, spokesperson said. About Aadhar: Aadhaar is a 12 digit unique-identity number issued to all Indian residents based on their biometric and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established on 12 July 2016 by the Government of India. UIDAI is under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, under the provisions of the Aadhaar Act 2016. It is the world's largest biometric ID system, with over 1.123 billion enrolled members as of 28 February 2017. As of this date, over 99% of Indians aged 18 and above had been enrolled in Aadhaar and World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer described it as "the most sophisticated ID programme in world". However, Aadhaar is not a proof of citizenship. It does not itself grant any rights to domicile in India. (With inputs from PTI)