Although the issues of privacy and consent remain paramount, we look forward to partnering with various private sector players for Digital India: Garg
UIDAI is working with regulators such as RBI to expand reach to the fintech and NBFC sectors: UIDAI CEO
300 central schemes and 650 state-sponsored schemes run on the unique identification project
UIDAI chief executive officer (CEO) Saurabh Garg has expressed interest in exploring a partnership between the unique identification authority and private players to further the Digital India initiative.
“Although the issues of privacy and consent remain paramount, we look forward to partnering with various private sector players for Digital India,” said Garg.
He made the comments during a fireside chat with Meta India’s head of public policy Rajiv Aggarwal on the sidelines of the Global Fintech Fest 2022.
Touting the scale of Aadhaar, Garg said that 300 central schemes and 650 state-sponsored schemes deployed the unique identification project.
Addressing the gathering, Garg also noted that Aadhaar was being leveraged for effective delivery of financial services. He further said that the agency was working with regulators to expand its penetration in the fintech space.
“We have about 8 crore authentications a day with nearly 40% of them for Aadhaar-enabled payment systems. So, the banking sector has leveraged the ecosystem. Going forward, we are working with regulators like the RBI to expand our reach to the fintech and NBFC sectors,” said the UIDAI chief.
Around 1.34 Bn Indians have been enrolled on the identity database in the decade since its launch, said the top official. It is pertinent to note that the project was kicked off back in 2009 under the aegis of the Ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY).
“We’re at a stage where 100% adult residents in the country have Aadhaar unless they belong to the remote pockets,” added Garg.
He further added, “Deduplication, removal of ghost beneficiaries, mitigation of leakage of funds and authentication are some of the benefits that Aadhaar offers.”
His statements comes a couple of days after UIDAI introduced the fingerprint ‘liveliness’ feature on its Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS). The new measure will increase the sensitivity of the hardware to determine whether the fingerprint being used belongs to a person who’s alive or not.
A History Of Trouble
Even as the UIDAI looks to partner with private players, the agency has, for the most part, been bogged down by its own set of controversies. Earlier this year, the Comptroller Auditor General (CAG) of India published a 100-page long audit report pointing at various issues with the functioning of the UIDAI.
From issues over authenticity to archiving of data, CAG gave a dressing down to the authority over the matter.
In April this year, UIDAI said that it cancelled more than 5.98 Lakh duplicate Aadhaar cards after ‘face’ was added as an extra biometric verification feature to address the duplication of the document.
In July, the agency also announced a ‘Bug Bounty’ programme to weed out vulnerabilities in Aadhaar’s data security system. Even UIDAI top officials have previously also confirmed that multiple attempts have been made to infiltrate safeguards around Aadhaar data storage.
The government has previously even touted Aadhar’s 2048-bit encryption, telling Courts that it would take ‘more than the age of the universe for the fastest computer on earth, or any supercomputer, to break one key of Aadhaar encryption’.
Proving these claims hollow, in one instance back in 2018, hackers leaked the Aadhaar card details of the then Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman RS Sharma after he dared them to do so.
However, Aadhaar continues to be the most important layer for the India stack. From authentication to developing APIs on top of the data, the unique identification project has proved to be one of the major building blocks of the puzzle that is Digital India.
