UIDAI devises method to recover lost Aadhaar numbers

The Unique Identification Authority of India, which oversees the country’s unique identity project, Aadhaar, has come up with a way to recover lost Aadhaar numbers, according to the Business Standard.

The government organization devised the method after receiving several concerns from people who have lost their Aadhaar number or encountered enrollment errors.

Since the unique identity project kicked off in 2009, some 750 million residents have been issued an Aadhaar number.

India’s National Democratic Alliance government has also linked the Aadhaar number with many government subsidies and welfare programs.

Considering a citizen can only enroll for Aadhaar once, it was imperative that there was a method to recovering the number in the event that they misplaced all possible links to it, said a government official.

“Enrolling again is not an option as the system automatically rejects biometric details that have been registered once,” said the official.

The new mechanism allows a citizen to enter their biometrics and the system will continue to request more demographic information until the backend server narrows the number down to 10 potential matches.

None of the Aadhaar holder’s private data will be shown to the person or the operator during the whole process until the system has found an exact match.

Previously reported, India’s ministry of information technology and communications will take over the Aadhaar system.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometrics  |  Identity  |  India  |  UIDAI