With the 68th Republic Day, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has also achieved another landmark by generating 111 crore Aadhaar cards in a population of 125 crore plus.
The world's largest and unique biometrics-based identification programme with a real-time online authentication infrastructure -- Aadhaar -- has also been recognised in the recent UN Report on World Social Situation. It is seen as a developmental tool with "tremendous potential to foster inclusion by giving all people, including the poorest and most marginalised, an official identity" and a wonderful "critical step in enabling fairer access of the people to government benefits and services."
"Aadhaar generation has crossed the 111+ crore mark. It's a great achievement towards inclusion of everyone into national development fabric. It has come a long way in less than six and a half years of its journey from being a unique identification programme to transform itself into a critical development tool of public–centric good governance and targeted delivery of services, benefits and subsidies," said Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Aadhaar enrolment ecosystem with 135 registrars and 612 enrolment agencies working at 47,192 enrolment stations has been enrolling and updating 7-8 lakh requests per day. Aadhaar card generation as on May 31, 2014, was 63.22 crore with a per day enrolment trend of about 3-4 lakh which remained around 5-6 lakh per day till October 2016. However, since demonetisation, Aadhaar card enrolment and update requests are in the range of 7-8 lakh per day. With over 47.8 crore Aadhaar cards generated since June 2014, Aadhaar cards now stands at 111+ crore.
UIDAI has 28,332 permanent enrolment centres, where people may go for enrolment, updation and other Aadhaar card related services. UIDAI has a capacity of generating and dispatching over 15 lakh Aadhaar cards every day.
