What is Aadhaar
Aadhaar number is a 12-digit random number issued by the UIDAI
(“Authority”) to the residents of India after satisfying the verification
process laid down by the Authority. Any individual, irrespective of age and
gender, who is a resident of India, may voluntarily enrol to obtain Aadhaar
number. Person willing to enrol has to provide minimal demographic and
biometric information during the enrolment process which is totally free of
cost. An individual needs to enrol for Aadhaar only once and after de-duplication only
one Aadhaar shall be generated, as the uniqueness is
achieved through the process of demographic and biometric de-duplication.
Demographic information
Name, Date of Birth
(verified) or Age (declared), Gender, Address, Mobile Number (optional) and
Email ID (optional), in case of Introducer-based enrolment- Introducer name and
Introducer’s Aadhaar number, in case of Head of Family based enrolmen- Name of
Head of Family, Relationship and Head of Family’s Aadhaar number; in case of
enrolment of child- Enrolment ID or Aadhaar number of any one parent, Proof of
Relationship (PoR) document
Biometric information
Ten Fingerprints, Two
Iris Scans, and Facial Photograph
Aadhaar number is
verifiable in an online, cost-effective way. It is unique and robust enough to
eliminate duplicates and fake identities and may be used as a basis/primary
identifier to roll out several Government welfare schemes and programmes for
effective service delivery thereby promoting transparency and good governance.
This is the only program of its kind globally, wherein a state-of-the-art
digital and online Id is being provided free of cost at such a large scale to
people, and has the potential to change the way service delivery functions in
the country.
Aadhaar number is devoid of any intelligence and does not profile people
based on caste, religion, income, health and geography. The Aadhaar number is a
proof of identity, however, it does not confer any right of citizenship or
domicile in respect of an Aadhaar number holder.
Aadhaar is a strategic policy tool for social and financial inclusion,
public sector delivery reforms, managing fiscal budgets, increase convenience
and promote hassle-free people-centric governance. Aadhaar can be used as a
permanent Financial Address and facilitates financial inclusion of the
underprivileged and weaker sections of the society and is therefore a tool of
distributive justice and equality. The Aadhaar identity platform is one of the
key pillars of the ‘Digital India’, wherein every resident of the country is
provided with a unique identity. The Aadhaar programme has already achieved
several milestones and is by far the largest biometrics based identification system
in the world.
Aadhaar identity platform with its inherent features of Uniqueness,
Authentication, Financial Address and e-KYC, enables the Government of India to
directly reach residents of the country in delivery of various subsidies,
benefits and services by using the resident’s Aadhaar number only.
Features of Aadhaar
Uniqueness
This is achieved through the process of
demographic and biometric de-duplication. The de-duplication process compares
the resident’s demographic and biometric information, collected during the
process of enrolment, with the records in the UIDAI database to verify if the
resident is already in the database or not. An individual needs to enrol for
Aadhaar only once and after de-duplication only one Aadhaar shall be generated.
In case, the resident enrols more than once, the subsequent enrolments will be
rejected.
Portability
Aadhaar gives nationwide portability as it
can be authenticated anywhere on-line. This is critical as millions of Indians
migrate from one state to another or from rural area to urban centres etc.
Random number
Aadhaar number is a random number devoid of
any intelligence. Person willing to enrol has to provide minimal demographic
along with biometric information during the enrolment process. The Aadhaar
enrolment process does not capture details like caste, religion, income,
health, geography, etc.
Scalable technology architecture
The UID architecture is open and scalable.
Resident’s data is stored centrally and authentication can be done online from
anywhere in the country. Aadhaar Authentication service is built to handle 100
million authentications a day.
Open source technologies
Open source architecture precludes dependence
on specific computer hardware, specific storage, specific OS, specific database
vendor, or any specific vendor technologies to scale. Such applications are
built using open source or open technologies and structured to address
scalability in a vendor neutral manner and allow co-existence of heterogeneous
hardware within same application.
ONLINE AADHAR SERVICES