Aadhaar update

Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Nandan Nilekani said the Unique Identification Number, renamed as ‘Aadhaar’, would be issued in a few days to Indian residents. He said in the first four years, 600 million people would be covered and the UID number would be useful for a number of applications like financial inclusion. The UIDAI had discussed with RBI for preparing the roadmap for financial inclusion with help of micro-ATMs, he said. A unique eco-system would be created, he said, where the authority would be surrounded by registrars which would be either banks, oil companies or public sector units. Nilekani said a big challenge which UID was facing was of de-duplication. Giving UID number was akin to giving mobile identity to a person using biometric technology. He said approaching the authority for a second time would be made a penal offence. Nilekani said the online verification of the UID number would be done in five to six seconds and would also work on the mobile network. To a query, he said implementation of the project would also require stable internal security.