Services at Aadhaar Seva Kendras to be streamlined: Govt

KEY STORY

• Taking note of irregularities at a few Aadhaar Seva Kendras, the ministry of electronics and information technology announced on Saturday that it will streamline the delivery of services and improve the interface between consumers and service providers.

• The initiative has been taken after minister of state for IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar made incognito visits to a few centres to inspect the delivery of services and came upon some complaints, said a functionary aware of the details.

• The centres provide services related to Aadhaar- a 12-digit unique number assigned to residents- from enrolment to updating of details, and are administered by the Unique Identification Authority of India under the IT ministry.

• The minister has instructed officials to visit the centres and ensure services are not only streamlined, but consumer complaints are addressed in time, the functionary said, requesting anonymity.

• “The ministry is embarking on raising the bar on customer service and digital nagrik (customer) experience across all the service kendras. ASKs (Aadhaar Seva Kendras) are representative of the new-gen governance that Digital India is delivering,” Chandrasekhar said on Saturday.

CONCLUSION

 The is ministry is focusing on raising the service standards consistent across all the centres and on ensuring complaints of discourteousness, charging fees for free services or in excess to the prescribed fee, among others, are addressed even if they are few, the functionary quoted above said.

While services such as enrolment and mandatory biometric update are offered free of cost, additions or changes to demographic details are chargeable. These charges are uniform across the country.