With eye on civic polls, local reps demand Aadhaar camps in Pune wards

PUNE: Ahead of civic polls, local representatives at the district- and municipal corporation- level are making a beeline for organising Aadhaar card camps in their respective wards.

Earlier, there were 60 Aadhaar card machines operating at various ward offices however the state government transferred half of them from Maha Online to Maha IT (both government-owned companies) where the work of machine calibration and user identification is currently underway. Hence, there are only 30 such machines at various ward offices presently.

Rahul Jagtap, chief of the information and technology department, said, “The Pune district collectorate issues machines as per demand to social organisations and banks among others. We provide machines to hold camps of two to three days.”

Another Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) official said, “Based on applications from corporators, schools and social organisations, we provide machines as per availability. We have received more than 15 applications for arranging camps in different wards.”

“As per the Pune district collector’s guidelines, Aadhaar machines will be provided only to camps held at government premises such as government- schools, colleges and other establishments such as ward offices etc.,” the official said.

Rohini Akhade, nodal officer for Aadhaar, Pune district, said, “We have received applications from local representatives not only from PMC but also Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) and Pune rural. At present, we have a total 350 machines out of which 213 are operating. We have demanded 100 more machines from UIDAI. We have to sort out the applications as per the demands of the corporators. However, the demand of local corporators is more than the others.”