Chennai Corporation is planning to integrate Aadhaar with various
civic services, including birth and death certificates, property tax
assessment, trade licence and building approval.

Over the past few
years, there have been many instances of residents complaining to the
Chennai Corporation Commissioner whenever zonal level officials asked
residents to produce Aadhaar for civic services. Former councillors have
also been complaining to senior officials that zonal level officials
were reportedly harassing residents, demanding Aadhaar. A few years ago,
former Commissioner Vikram Kapur had even warned zonal level officials
of action for demanding Aadhaar from residents for civic services.

Now,
the situation seems to be changing. Following a meeting on the State
Resident Data hub held on October 23, senior officials have informed
zonal level officials that database integration of Aadhaar may be
carried out to “ensure the authenticity of the individuals availing
themselves of civic services”.

“To validate the correctness of
data entered in birth and death, all taxation and all other types of
public service related information, integration of UID data will be
carried out,” said an official of the Corporation.

Integration of
Aadhaar data with modules, such as birth and death, taxation and public
related information, will lead to proper authentication of the citizen
demographic information. “This will also integrate Greater Chennai
Corporation data with other departments,” said the official.

Data
available with the Corporation from 1934 will be covered initially. The
birth registration details are available for 69,05,698 residents. Death
registration details are available for 29,15,701 residents. Property Tax
Assessment data on 12,05,666 residents, profession tax assessment data
of 1,22,766 residents, company tax assessment data of 16,036 residents,
trade licence data of 53,006 residents, town planning data of 2,177
residents in old system and town planning data of 1,713 residents online
will be integrated with Aadhaar.

Council decision

“For Aadhaar linkage, Greater Chennai Corporation has to enrol as a sub authentication user agency,” said an official.

Currently,
the Tamil Nadu e governanace Agency (TNeGA) is functioning as an
authentication user agency. To enrol as a sub authentication user
agency, a joint undertaking has to be signed by the civic body. The
application of sub authentication user agency under Regulation 15 of
Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations, 2016 will be submitted shortly.
The Corporation Special Officer’s Council has decided to send a letter
to TNeGA for authorising the Chennai Corporation as a sub authentication
user agency, said an official.

Former DMK Councillor Deva Jawahar
said any decision on Aadhaar should be taken only after discussing the
problems faced by residents at the new Corporation Council.

“Many
officials seem to be unable to understand all the aspects of the
problems faced by residents. So the Special Officer’s Council of the
Chennai Corporation Commissioner should not take such major decisions
without a debate,” said Mr. Jawahar.