One million Indian residents are expected to enroll for unique identity (Aadhaar) number every day from October, the Chairman of Unique Identity and Development Authority of India, Mr Nandan M. Nilekani, said today.
“As UIDAI scales up the systems both at the back-end by adding more technologies and at the front by adding more enrolment stations, it’s confident of achieving this goal,” he said.
Speaking at a conference with the theme ‘Next Generation Service Delivery — Enabled by Aadhaar’, organised by Nasscom and UIDAI, Mr Nilekani said as of now 95 lakh (9.5 million) people have been issued with Aadhaar numbers.
Another UIDAI official said the figure is expected to cross one crore today.
Mr Nilekani said plans are on track to issue Aadhaar numbers to 600 million (60 crore) people in three to three-and-half years. He said the entire enrolment infrastructure would stabilise in the next few months, adding that UIDAI has built a massive biometrics-based capabilities.
“We are very comfortable that in the next few months, we will have critical mass of people around the country who will have Aadhaar numbers with them,” he said.
He said UIDAI would create for the first time in the country a national devices’ infrastructure, which is inter-operable.
Mr Nilekani said devices compliant with Aadhaar standards — whether they are in bank branches or kirana stores or post offices or in schools or public health centres or anywhere — would be inter-operable.