Nilekani hopes 60 crore Aadhar numbers would be issued by 2014

UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani today expressed hope that the target of issuing 60 crore Aadhaar numbers would be met by 2014, saying so far 47 crore people have already received them.
"We have issued 47 crore Aadhaar numbers till date and we will meet the target of 60 crore Aadhar enrolments by 2014," Nilekani told reporters here at an event organised by NASSCOM.
Nilekani said currently the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is issuing three crore Aadhaar numbers every month.
On Aadhaar card case pending before the Supreme Court, Nilekani said the apex court is talking about serious implications in implementation of welfare schemes.

"The court is talking about the service part of the scheme. The fact of the matter is more and more people are having these numbers ... What this does is, it helps people to use this infrastructure and create innovative applications that benefit people," he added.
The Supreme Court on Sept 24 in an interim order had said Aadhaar should not be made mandatory and asked the Centre not to link it to welfare schemes. It also had stated that illegal immigrants should not be issued UID numbers.

Replying to a query, Nilekani said UIDAI have taken all steps to ensure the system is secured and every partner was selected with due process under procurement law.

To another question, he said the next government that believed in progress of the country and giving corrupt-free government would continue with the Aadhaar project.
"This a very progressive project.It is a project of social inclusion; helps make government expenditure more efficient; reduces corruption," he said.
Earlier,NASSCOM Product Council announced the launch of the Aadhaar Diffusion Project, an effort in collaboration with UIDAI to accelerate the development of applications and services that leverage the Aadhaar identity infrastructure.
Talking about the initiative, Nilekani said the goal is to achieve widespread diffusion of Aadhaar platform knowledge across new entrepreneurial ventures and existing software companies to assist and nurture Aadhaar capabilities across a broad-range of software applications and services to benefit residents, government and enterprises.

"We are sure that this initiative with NASSCOM will go a long way to help build an innovative application ecosystem for Aadhaar and deliver widespread benefits to residents of India," he added.