Target of 20 lakh Aadhaar based PoS units not met due to supply crunch: Govt

The target of introducing 20 lakh Aadhaar-based Point of Sale (POS) terminals has not been met due to supply constraints and there are only 5.50 lakh such machines at present, the Rajya Sabha was informed today.

"The deployment of 20 lakh Aadhaar based POS terminals is still under process. Presently, 5,50,192 Aadhaar based POS machines have been installed," Minister of State for Electronics and IT SS Ahluwalia said in a written reply to the Upper House.

On whether the target of deploying 20 lakh Aadhaar based POS terminals by September 2017 - announced in the Union Budget 2017-18 - had been achieved, the minister replied in negative.

"As reported by Department of Financial Services, this delay is due to constraints in supply of POS machines," he added.

Replying to another question, Ahluwalia informed that biometrics were matched in 93.5 per cent of total Aadhaar authentication transactions during first three months of 2018.

In Aadhaar authentication, resident's identity information via demographic/biometric OTP is matched with the information available in Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) database and accordingly a Yes/No or eKYC response is provided.

"A no response does not amount to failed authentication because it confirms that the identity information submitted by the resident does not match with the information available with UIDAI and this could be inter alia due to impersonation, wrong placing of fingerprints, wrong feeding of Aadhaar number, wrong entry of OTP (One Time Password)...," the minister said.

The authentication transactions in which biometrics were matched stood at 93.5 per cent in 2018 (till March 2018), this statistics in 2017 stood at 94.5 per cent.

To ensure that beneficiaries are not excluded from welfare schemes, various government departments like DBT mission, and Department of Revenue have issued notifications and guidelines on exception-handling mechanism for use of Aadhaar in various schemes.