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The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is expected to meet its target to enroll 600 million people over the next few weeks, is now targeting to cover a billion residents over the next one year.
UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani said that the authority has recently got the mandate to enroll in four more states, which means that it could give a Aadhaar number to 950 million people by 2015.
"There could be a billion numbers by late 2015 or early 2016," said Nilekani who was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of a book ‘Growth & Governance, Essays in Honour of Nandan Nilekani’.
In the initial days of being set up, the authority had set a target to enroll 600 millions by 2014. So far, it has touched 591 million. "By March third week, the target of 600 million would be crossed," said Nilekani who termed the initiative as a "start-up" within the government.
He also drew a parallel between the users of Whatsapp -- a mobile messaging application, which was recently acquired by Facebook for a whopping $19 billion and the users of Aadhaar.
He said that while in five years Whatsapp acquired 450 million users in 5 years, Aadhaar already has almost 600 million in 4.5 years. "So, it was like doing it at Internet speed in the government."
Nilekani had last week made public his plans to resign from UIDAI by end of March as he decided to contest elections from South Bangalore from a Congress party ticket. Co-founder of Infosys Ltd, Nilekani relinquished his position from Infosys to join the government in June 2009.
