Around 600 million Indians will possess Aadhaar cards by the middle of 2014, Mr Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India, has said.

So far 33 million people have been issued the cards while another 40 million have been enrolled, he revealed, adding that currently a total of 600,000 new people were being enrolled at 20,000 locations across the country every day.

“This will go to one million a day by October,” he said and added that the biggest demand was from people who did not have an alternate way to establish their identity.

No duplication

With bio-metrics – ten fingerprints and retina imaging – the basis of the Aadhaar cards, Mr Nilekani called the ‘de-duplication' technology the most important part of the UID architecture.

“In a couple of years, there will be 400 million cards, and every day one million new people will be enrolling. This means that before the next morning, each of these will have to be checked against the data of 400 million existing cards so there will be no duplication,” he said.

Financial inclusion

The UIDAI is also conducting a pilot in Tumkur to open simultaneous bank accounts linked to their UID. “This is important for financial inclusion and we are in talks with 64 banks across the country,” Mr Nilekani said.

The key game changer in the UID project was the on-line identity that would provide individuals with a portable identity that can be authenticated anywhere he said, quipping, “This is not technological gobbledygook. It will change India at scale and speed.”

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