Himachal Pradesh Chief Secretary Prabhoda Saxena launched the face authentication facility in the Public Distribution System on Friday (1 August). On this occasion, he insisted on ensuring 100 percent Aadhaar coverage in the state. Its goal is to bring transparency in this system.

He chaired a review meeting with all the departmental heads and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) officials, in which the progress related to the state’s Aadhaar was discussed.

Himachal’s achievement in base coverage

Himachal Pradesh is at the forefront of the Aadhaar generation of children below 5 years of age in the country. While the national average is 39 percent, this figure has reached 56 percent in Himachal. The number of pending cases of compulsory biometric updates in the last 3 months has come down from 5.5 lakh to 4.75 lakhs.

Extension at schools and vaccination centers

The Chief Secretary directed the Department of Digital Technology and Government to include private schools in the campaign of biometric update in collaboration with the Department of Education. Along with this, he also directed to launch an awareness campaign for parents in schools, so that the compulsory biometric updates that take place at the age of 5 and 15 years can be fulfilled.

Target to connect children up to 5 years old with Aadhaar

Instructions have been given to install Aadhaar kit at vaccination centers. Health Department, Digital Technology and Government Department and India Post Payment Bank (IPPB) will together ensure the Aadhaar enrollment of children of this age group. The goal is that all children up to the age of 5 years should be linked to Aadhaar completely.

Digitization of Aadhaar based services will be compulsory

Chief Secretary Saxena directed to ensure Aadhaar based certification in all services provided by the state government. It also said that the documents that the state government issues should also be fully digitized, so that both transparency and convenience should increase.