 "UIDAI to issue highest ever Aadhaar numbers in October")
Despite of the interim order by the Supreme Court that Aadhaar number is not mandatory for availing government services and benefits, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Tuesday said that a record number of 30 million people are expected to be issued the number this month. This will be the highest ever issuance of Aadhaar numbers in a month , UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said.
In reply to a query on how the pending public interest litigation (PIL) in the SC would affect the project, Nilekani said that was related to a ‘specific issue’ on the use of Aadhaar in government programme which is subjudice. “The fact is that today we have 470 million people with Aadhaar numbers. In the month of October which is get over in the next couple of days, we would add 30 million more people, the highest ever done in a month. So the fact of the matter is that more and more people will have these numbers,” he added.
The UIDAI chairman said even though there are various other means of identity authentication that are available at the moment, there is clearly no other platform for online identity authentication. “One of the biggest things we have realised that India is a very migrant community; there was a recent report which said India has 400 million migrants. Aadhaar which provides online identity verification makes their lives simpler and a nation-wide mobility of identity,” he added.
Meanwhile, IT industry body Nasscom has joined hands with UIDAI to accelerate the development of applications and services that leverage the Aadhaar identity infrastructure. As part of the initiative, Nasscom plans to hold a number of activities to evangelise software developers to build an innovative application ecosystem for Aadhaar.