‘Awaiting green signal to cover all hospitals’

VIJAYAWADA: Not all babies are born with a silver spoon, but in Andhra Pradesh, at least 30,000 babies received Aadhaar numbers, minutes after they came out of the womb. Since their biometrics cannot be taken at such an early stage, they are tagged with biometrics of either parent. And after they attain the age of 5, babies can map their own biometrics and retain the same Aadhaar number they got at the time of birth.“We introduced the pilot project in some government hospitals in AP a few months ago. As per rules, till the age of 5, it will be biometrics of either parent that can be tagged to the Aadhaar number,” G Venugopal Reddy, deputy director general of Unique Identification of Authority India (UIDAI), told TOI.Till date, of 25,32,057 babies in the age-group of 0-5 who got Aadhaar numbers in AP, at least 30,000 were tagged right after birth, said an official.The pilot project is being implemented in government hospitals in Vijayawada, KGH in Visakhapatnam, Kakinada government hospital and few district-level hospitals.In these places, Aadhaar numbers are being generated for newborns whose parents give consent. Explaining the advantage of having Aadhaar numbers early, officials said these babies need not be taken to the enrolment centre, if Aadhaar is needed at such an early age.The project was initiated in 2016, but was caught in a software glitch and finally took off in last few months.Similar pilot projects are in places like Chandigarh and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Local UIDAI officials said they are awaiting the green signal from the headquarters for them to cover all hospitals in the state and ensure every newborn is tagged with the Aadhaar number at birth.