The government has chosen retired IAS officer and former DEITY Secretary J Satyanarayana as the Chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
Under the recently passed Aadhaar Act, the government has to appoint a chairperson on part time or full-time basis, two part time members and a CEO of UIDAI.
Satyanarayana, a 1977 batch IAS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre, has been appointed as a part-time chairperson of UIDAI. The present CEO of UIDAI, Ajay Bhushan Pandey is a serving IAS officer.
The government on Tuesday appointed two private persons as the part-time members — Rajesh Jain, founder and managing director of netCORE solutions, and Anand Deshpande, founder and CEO of Presistent Systems.
Rajesh Jain, the netCORE solutions founder is a well known Mumbai enterprenuer who graduated from IIT Bombay and has a Masters in electrical engineering from Columbia University.
Anand Deshpande, the chairman and MD of Persistent Systems, is a BTech from IIT Kharagpur and a Computer Science MS from Indiana University.
Both Jain as well as Deshpande will work as the part-time members of UIDAI.
The government had set up a screening committee for filling the top posts at UIDAI and the Appointments Committee of Cabinet headed by the Prime Minister has made the appointments.
Satyanarayana, is known for his contributions to the e-governance sector and was the founder of the e-seva, a one stop shop for citizen services. He has also been part of the Passport Seva project of the External Affairs Ministry and various e-governance projects in Karnataka. He served as special chief secretary in Andhra Pradesh.
By EB Bureau
