Top IT vendors, including Wipro, Infosys, TCS, IBM and Accenture, are among 10 companies that have made it to the initial shortlist of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI's) software application development project.

Others who have made it in the first cut are Mastek, MindTree, Logica, Siemens and Mahindra Satyam, sources said. This is the pre-qualification stage and would be followed by technical evaluation, detailed presentations by shortlisted parties in the next few days, and evaluation of the submitted financial bids thereafter.

UID SOFTWARE TENDER

In January, the UIDAI had invited bids and floated the Request for Proposal (RFP) for design, development, testing, integration, support and maintenance of UID application software; the date for the submission of bids was initially fixed for February 24, but was later extended to March 2. The authority received 19 bids for the applications development project, of which 10 players have now been shortlisted, sources pointed out. The application software RFP assumes significance not so much in terms of its size - upcoming contracts involving selection of managed service provider,

setting up of data centre and disaster recovery sites etc., would be far bigger in the context of India's Rs 66,200 crore domestic IT market.

FIRST STEP

But, the software tender represents the first concrete step towards creation of IT infrastructure for rolling out the UID project, under which the Centre plans to hand out a unique identification number to every Indian resident over the coming years.

The UID programme, clearly one of India's most ambitious projects, is being seen as an effective platform for financial inclusion and targeted subsidy payments.

In his Budget speech, the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, said that the authority would be able to meet its commitment for issuing the first set of UID numbers in the coming year.

With the UIDAI now getting into the operational mode, the Union Budget has proposed to allocate Rs 1,900 crore to the authority for year 2010-11. This is against the Rs 120 crore allocated in 2009- 10.Already, significant work has begun.

Last month, the authority selected Ernst & Young as consultant to develop the technological roadmap for the UID project.
In addition, the bids for a manpower services tender floated by the Authority have seen interest from top staffing firms such as Ma Foi, Teamlease and Datacore.