The UIDAI has started the project in Daga Memorial Women’s Hospital, Nagpur, and Osmanabad Civil Hospital in collaboration with the state health department for babies born in the two facilities. The UIDAI has started the project in Daga Memorial Women’s Hospital, Nagpur, and Osmanabad Civil Hospital in collaboration with the state health department for babies born in the two facilities.

The state government has started enrolling newborns for Aadhaar cards in hospitals before the babies are discharged post delivery. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has started the project in Daga Memorial Women’s Hospital, Nagpur, and Osmanabad Civil Hospital in collaboration with the state health department to create a 12-digit unique Aadhaar number for babies born in the two facilities. Daga Hospital has around 1,500 deliveries a month and over 15,000 a year. So far, over 20 babies have been enrolled for Aadhaar cards at the hospital since the project was rolled out.

“We received two enrollment kits from the UIDAI last week for taking biometrics and photographs of babies. We have trained four hospital staffers to start the process. We have been told that the collector office will soon send its employees for the process at our hospital,” said medical superintendent Dr Seema Parvekar.

Each newborn’s photograph, along with the mother’s, will be taken as identity proof and the name on the child’s Aadhaar card will appear as ‘son or daughter of’.

Initially, the mother’s finger print will be taken for a baby’s Aadhaar card as officials claim that a child’s fingerprint changes as he or she grows. Since an iris scan is not possible immediately after birth because a baby cannot even open his or her eyes for two-three days, the state government has created a provision for parents to get an iris scan done when the child turns five.

Osmanabad Civil Hospital witnesses over 10,000 deliveries a year and the facility started enrolling newborns for Aadhaar few weeks ago.

The state’s pilot project comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year asked the UIDAI to expedite the process of coverage of Aadhaar cards. According to the UIDAI, only 25 per cent of children in the age bracket of 0-5 years have Aadhaar cards in the country.

A newborn’s Aadhaar card will be linked to the parent’s. Maharashtra accounts for 10.5 lakh deliveries in government hospitals in a year of which, 5 lakh are recorded in rural and district hospitals under the Directorate of Health Services (DHS).

“DHS is likely to expand Aadhaar registration to other hospitals. We first want to see how registrations in these two hospitals go,” said Dr Archana Patil, joint director, DHS. According to Dr Satish Pawar, a huge chunk of children, specially from the rural and tribal population, can be tapped through hospitals. “We also conducted few Aadhaar registration camps during the pulse polio campaign,” he said. According to him, about 2.5 lakh deliveries happen in primary health centers across Maharashtra every year. If the state government plans to further expand the UID process to the district hospitals, the rural and tribal population can be better covered.

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