Indians have used Aadhaar identity 8,621.2 crore times for authentication until November 2022, says Economic Survey 2022-23. It has been used 1,350.2 crore times for carrying out eKYC (know your customer) by various service providers, it says.
Aadhaar, a 12-digit unique identification number introduced in 2010, provides a digital identity to the residents of India and ensures authentication.
Explaining the benefits of Aadhaar, the survey, tabled in the Parliament today, called it an essential tool for social delivery by the state. According to the survey, 318 central schemes and over 720 state DBT (direct benefit transfer) schemes are notified under section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, and all these schemes use Aadhaar for targeted delivery of financial services, subsidies, and benefits. It also termed Aadhaar as the foundation of India’s digital integration.
Till November 2022, Aadhar enrollment agency, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has generated 135.2 crore Aadhaar numbers. It has been updated 71.1 crore times and 75.3 crore residents have linked their Aadhaar with ration cards to avail ration supplies, Aadhaar statistics given in the survey said. The statistics also say 27.9 crore residents linked Aadhaar with cooking gas connection for LPG subsidy and 75.4 crore bank accounts are linked with Aadhaar, and 1,549.8 crore transactions happened through Aadhaar Enabled Payment Systems during this period.
Aadhaar played a vital role in developing the Co-WIN platform and in the transparent administration of over 2 billion vaccine doses during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Aadhaar has played a key role in the implementation of the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) Scheme and Aadhaar seeding of the PDS database has resulted in significant savings due to eliminating ghost and duplicate beneficiaries, the survey pointed out.
The nationwide Aadhar ecosystem includes 66,103 Aadhaar counters and 34,834 Child Enrolment Lite Client devices, 15,002 Village Level Entrepreneurs operating as Banking Correspondents permitted to undertake Aadhaar updates services and 53,750 postmen/Grameen Dak Sewaks under India Post Payment Bank to provide mobile number update facility.
UIDAI has the responsibility to ensure that the information stored in the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) is secured and protected against unauthorised access or misuse.
