As part of the celebrations of 75 years of Independence, the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry has asked states to speed up implementation of the Unique Disability ID (UDID) scheme for persons with disabilities (PwD) in the 75 districts across India, which have been selected for their connection with the freedom struggle.
In a letter to the States on April 29, the Department of Empowerment of PwD (DEPwD) under the Ministry said the Rural Development Ministry had selected the UDID programme as a part of its 90-day campaign ending on July 27 in districts “selected on the basis of unsung heroes of India’s freedom struggle” under Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. The campaign aimed for 100% coverage of 17 Central schemes in the 75 districts, it said.
For the UDID project, the department said the targets were to clear all pending applications, digitise data of PwD who had been issued manual certificate and generate UDID cards for them and register those PwD with 40% disabilities who had not been enrolled onto the UDID portal yet. Apart from this, the Ministry suggested intensive publicity programmes, setting up of district-level committees to oversee the progress and holding camps along with the rural development authorities, alongside camps for other Central schemes.
Among the selected districts are Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, native place of Mangal Pandey; Purba Midnapore in West Bengal, the home district of Matangini Hazra; and Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh, where Chandra Shekhar Azad was from.
While the UDID project was launched in 2016, the DEPwD made it mandatory for states to issue disability certificates through the UDID portal from June 1, 2021, as opposed to the offline mode. So far, 72,06,947 UDID cards had been issued, a Ministry source said on Monday.
In a tweet on Monday, the DEPwD said it would review the status of the implementation of the UDID project in 10 states on Wednesday.
