Aadhaar-based DBT savings over Rs 900 bn as on Mar 31, says UIDAI official

The estimated savings and gains since the inception of Aadhaar-based Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) stood at over Rs 900 billion as on March 31 this year, a top official of UIDAI said on Wednesday.

"We have not spent even Rs 100 billion on Aadhaar cards and related systems so far. But the savings are enormous. We were able to save Rs 900.12 billion as on March 31 this year by using Aadhaar in some of the schemes such as PDS.

"We were able to weed out bogus and duplicate beneficiaries by using Aadhaar,"J Satyanarayana, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said in a programme at India School of Business (ISB).

He said 1.21 billion residents have so far enrolled for Aadhaar card and on an average over 30 million e-transactions are done using the identification system.

Satyanarayana further said there is need to do research and effect improvements on the Aadhaar system in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning for fraud detection and improving the process of enrolment and security ecosystem.

He said Aadhaar data is completely safe and secure and is kept in about 7,000 servers in Bengaluru and Manesar.