Aadhaar number holders can now update demographics online, but NPR-Aadhaar duplication remains an issue

The Unique Identificaiton Authority of India has launched a new web portal allowing Aadhaar number holders to correct or update their demographic details on the authority’s database.

Currently, the authority has issued roughly 220 million Aadhaar numbers, of the 270 million people who have enrolled, hindustanitimes reports.

Aadhaar is a unique twelve-digit number assigned to India’s residents by the UDAI, based on gathered biometric information. The program aims to improve social welfare by providing identity numbers to each of the country’s 1.2 billion people.

This new self-serve data correction website comes at the same time as some sobering statistics about the Aadhaar program and its success in India. According to an article in FirstPost.com, “80% of India is not covered [by the program]. Maharashtra and Andra Pradesh are the only states with some coverage at 35% and 57%, respectively. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu are woefully low at 2%, 5%, 18% and 10%.”

Also, in a separate hidustanitimes report, it’s suggested that duplicated efforts between the Aadhaar program, as well as the National Population Register (NPR) is creating confusion and adding significant costs to the home ministry, despite assurances that this would not be an issue.

“Nine months after a cabinet decision promised to avoid duplication and ‘avoidable costs’ in creating the NPR and Aadhaar, it has now been revealed that the public exchequer would end up wasting more than US$200 million (Rs.900 crore) on duplicating enrolment details for the two programmes,” the article continues. “For enrolment with or without the biometric factor – i.e. photo, iris scan and ten fingerprints – would cost roughly the same.”

This isn’t the first time conflict has arisen between the profiling efforts of both the NPR and Aadhaar programs. As reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, duplication has already stalled progress between these two programs.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometrics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  government purchasing  |  identification  |  India  |  iris scans