TNN

New Delhi, Jul 15: Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, who has given up his corporate career for a stint with the government, arrived in the Capital on Tuesday and immediately got cracking on his new job with a stopover at the oil ministry. The reason: The Unique Identification Authority of India chairman thinks the huge database of cooking gas customers and kerosene dealers maintained by state-run oilmarketing companies could be a good starting point for creating citizens ID-cards.

"We will work closely with the petroleum ministry for the task... This is just a preliminary meeting. I am yet to take over officially... I will do that in a day or two. We have a lot of work to do, many mountains to climb... give me some time before I can talk about a timeframe,'' Nilekani said after meeting oil minister Murli Deora, minister of state Jitin Prasada, senior ministry bureaucrats and CEOs of oil firms.

Deora said the ministry was going ahead with launching a pilot project to issue smart cards to cooking gas and kerosene consumers in Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The aim is to track the flow of government dole on kitchen fuels and ensure the needy received it. He said the experience will be shared with Nilekani and the two IDs could be merged once the entire unique system is in place.

Petroleum secretary R S Pandey said there was synergy in the two programmes and the oilmarketing industry will lend a helping hand to the ID authority. Synchronisation of data, and standardisation of biometric information and systems will go a long way in targeting subsidies to the poor.

With the ministry gearing up to widen the reach of cooking gas to cover a third of the population, the wider spread of dealership could provide a bigger point of interface to the ID authority. At present nearly 9,350 cooking gas dealers serve nearly 11 crore consumers. Taking an average of five members to a consumer-family, that brings about half the population under the clean fuelumbrella.