8.9.17

Post Offices and Banks to be Hub of Aadhaar

The government is planning to limit the role of private agencies in Aadhaar enrolment and will focus on setting up permanent centres owned by the government and banks to facilitate registrations and updates as the country nears 100% Aadhaar saturation levels.

The UIDAI has said this in a presentation to banks recently while informing them of the need to become UIDAI registrars for enrolling their customers under Aadhaar, and stressing on its intention of restricting the role of private registrars. The government is banking on 24,000 plus post offices and 12,000 bank branches to offer Aadhaar services to citizens by March next year. This is also the deadline fixed by the government to achieve 100% Aadhaar target ­ which is at 87% now. UIDAI has now started enrolling people for Aadhaar in the two states in which it had not been allowed in so far ­ Assam and Meghalaya. Nearly 117 cr out of 132 cr people in India already have Aadhaar card.

UIDAI is planning Aadhaar enrolment in all nodal schools twice a year ­ as children at 5 years and 15 years need updates to their Aadhaar biometric details.  A big criticism of Aadhaar project has been its dependence on private registrars for enrolment.

Also, 110 cr bank accounts need to be linked to Aadhaar by December 31 ­ nearly 70 cr accounts have already been seeded with Aadhaar but it is suspected that many people may not have an Aadhaar or their details may not be updated in their existing Aadhaar data and may not match with the details in bank records. UIDAI has asked nearly 42 banks to offer these Aadhaar enrolment facilities at nearly 14,000 out of their existing branches. SBI to offer it at 3,149 branches, Punjab National Bank at 939 branches, ICICI Bank at 485, HDFC Bank at 477 and Bank of India at 700 branches.

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