UIDAI confident of issuing one million numbers a day from Oct

Come October, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will start issuing one million aadhaar numbers a day, keeping in line with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget announcement, said UIDAI chairman Nandan M Nilekani.

Nilekani who was in Bangalore to attend a conference organised by Nasscom and UIDAI, told Business Standard that so far around 10 million aadhaar numbers have been issued to the residents, and the authority was confident of achieving the goal.

“The finance minister has already said that we will be enrolling one million people a day by October, and we very much intend to keep that promise.” He said the software developed for UIDAI and the internal experts team were robust, but the it was in the process of upgrading the hardware to hasten the process.

“As UIDAI scales up the systems both at the back-end by adding more technology and at the front by adding more enrollment stations, it is confident of achieving this goal.”

The UIDAI chairman said people have started relaising the benefits of aadhaar numbers and how it could help them in multiple ways — from opening a bank account to avail the benefits of various social welfare schemes.

“People are realising that this is an inclusive programme. It is a transformational project which can change the lives of the people, and ensure that the services are being delivered to the right people.”

UIDAI intends to issue 600 million aadhaar numbers by 2014. Nilekani said he was confident that the enrollment process will stabilise over the next few months and “we will have a critical mass of people across the country who will have aadhaar numbers with them”.

Talking about the benefits of aadhaar, Nilekani said the UIDAI would create a national devices infrastructure to make the devices inter-operable. “Devices that are compliant with aadhaar standards – whether they are installed in bank branches, kirana stores, post offices, schools or even in public health centres –would be inter-operable.”