72.24 crore Aadhaar numbers generated under UIDAI project

The govt spent 946.32 crore on the project till Nov 30 this fiscal

As many as 72.24 crore Aadhaar numbers have been generated till December 14 this year while the UIDAI has spent Rs 5,311.6 crore on the project till November 30, 2014.

"A total outlay of Rs 13,663.22 crore has been approved by the government for implementation of Aadhaar project up to March 2017. Of this, a total amount of Rs 5,311.6 crore has been spent as on November 30," Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha today.

The government spent 946.32 crore on the project till November 30 this fiscal as against revised expenditure estimates of Rs 1,417 crore for 2014-15.

According to the information available, a sum of Rs 2,039 crore was provided for the project in budget estimates for 2014-15.

"With 72.24 crore Aadhaar generated across the country as on 14 December, nine States/UTs have achieved an Aadhaar saturation level exceeding 90 per cent and another seven States/UTs between 75-90 per cent," the minister said.

The Aadhaar platform is fully functional for authentication and e-KYC services, with more than 30 crore authentication and over 31 lakh e-KYC transactions carried out since inception, he said.

A total of 166 authentication agencies are operational for a variety of applications that leverage the authentication and e-KYC services.

Currently, a number of government schemes/programmes are already leveraging Aadhaar for implementation on a non-mandatory basis, it added.

For the purpose of Aadhaar enrolment, the government has taken a number of decisions to allocate/re-allocate states/UTs between UIDAI and Registrar General of India (RGI).

Most recently, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in its meeting held on September 10 approved the re-allocation of states/UTs between UIDAI and RGI. Currently 24 States/UTs are allocated to UIDAI and remaining 12 to RGI.

On accepting Aadhaar as proof of nationality, the minister said, "From the very inception, Aadhaar was implemented as a Proof of Identity with no associated rights and entitlements, nationality or citizenship. It has been mandated with issuing of Aadhaar numbers for all the residents of the country."

UIDAI was established on January 28, 2009 with the mandate to generate and assign UID numbers; define mechanisms and processes for interlinking UID with partner databases.

UIDAI is also mandated to frame policies related to updation mechanism and maintenance of UID data base on an ongoing basis; coordinate with implementation partners and user agencies, as also define conflict resolution mechanism; define usage of UID for delivery of various services and operate and manage all stages of UID lifecycle.