Justice K.S.Puttaswamy(Retd) vs Union Of India on 26 September, 2018
suggest the process for updation, modification, addition and deletion of data and fields from the
core database to be created under the Unique Identification for BPL Families project. This
Committee, on November 26, 2006, prepared a paper known as Strategic Vision Unique
Identification of Residents. Based thereupon, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) was set
up on December 04, 2006, to collate the National Population Register under the Citizenship Act,
1955 and the Unique Identification Number project of the Department of Information Technology.
The EGoM was also empowered to look into the methodology and specific milestones for early and
effective completion of projects and to take a final view on these projects. The EGoM was composed
of the then Ministers of External Affairs, Home Affairs, Law, Panchayati Raj and Communications
and Information Technology and the then Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission.
8) Various meetings on the Unique Identification (hereinafter referred to as UID) project were held
from time to time. In the fourth meeting held on December 22, 2006, various aspects of proposed
data elements and their formats were discussed. Thereafter, in its fifth meeting held on April 27,
2007, it was decided that the evolution of UID database would be in three stages in principle. The
Committee further decided that linkage with major partner databases such as Household Survey of
RD and the individual State Public Distribution System (PDS) databases should be taken up in a
phased manner. On June 11, 2007, at the final stage of the project, a presentation on the UID project
was made to the then Prime Minister by the Cabinet Secretary. The sixth meeting of the UID project
was held on June 15, 2007. The Committee, inter alia, took the following decisions:
(i) The numbering format of 11 digits was approved.
(ii) The need for UID authority to be created by an executive order under the aegis of the Planning
Commission was appreciated in order to ensure pan-departmental and neutral identity for the
authority.
(iii) The proposal for creation of Central and State UIDs was approved.
(iv) Department of Information Technology (DIT) was directed to work out modalities for linkage
with Election Commission and initiate discussions with MoRD and PDS for linkage.
(v) In principle, approval of proposed sequence for phasing plan was granted.
9) In the seventh meeting held on August 30, 2007, the proposed administrative framework and
structure of UID authority and manpower requirement, including financial implications, was
discussed. It was decided that a detailed proposal based on the resource model be presented to the
Committee for its in principle approval. At this stage, EGoM convened its first meeting on
November 27, 2007. At this meeting, a consensus emerged on the following points:
(i) There is a clear need for creating an identity related resident database, regardless of whether the
database is created on a de novo collection of data or is based on an already existing data (such as
the Election Commissions Voter List).
Indian Kanoon - http://indiankanoon.org/doc/127517806/
5