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Just 0.03% Of Aadhar Numbers Were Issued To People Without An Existing ID

The Aadhar Programme Is A Dismal Failure In A Key Objective It Set Out To Achieve
FILE - In this March 20, 2012 file photo, a tribal woman shows her ration card to receive coupons to purchase subsidized rice from a fair price shop under the Public Distribution System in Rayagada, in Indian eastern state of Orissa. India will send billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program inaugurated Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, aiming to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system. The new program would see welfare money directly deposited into recipients' bank accounts and require them to prove their identity with biometric data, such as fingerprints or retina scans. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)
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FILE - In this March 20, 2012 file photo, a tribal woman shows her ration card to receive coupons to purchase subsidized rice from a fair price shop under the Public Distribution System in Rayagada, in Indian eastern state of Orissa. India will send billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program inaugurated Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, aiming to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system. The new program would see welfare money directly deposited into recipients' bank accounts and require them to prove their identity with biometric data, such as fingerprints or retina scans. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

"I think we have good processes but remember we are a country where even today there are millions of people who don't have any form of identity, and we have been able to bring them into the system, otherwise they will be outsiders because they don't have an acknowledged existence. They can't apply for their PDS; they can't get a bank account."

--Nandan Nilekani, former UIDAI chairman, in 2012.

One of the key objectives of India's massive biometric identity programme was inclusion--bring into the world of subsidies, cash transfers and other state benefits those millions of Indians without any documentation. The problem was simple--to obtain most government documentation, you needed a list of other government documents. If you had none, it was virtually impossible to get a start.

But now, 6 years later, after covering 70% of the population (84 crore cards issued, as of May 2015), it has emerged that people without any prior identification documents who have managed to included through UIDAI, are a mere 0.03% of the cards issued (2.19 lakhs out of 83.19 crore issued). In other words, the Aadhar number has turned out, for more than 99% of card holders, to be little more than the third identification document they possessed (they needed two existing ids to get an Aadhar card).

UIDAI had developed an "introducer" system where people without an existing ID could get an Aaadhar card through someone who knew them and could vouch for them. But the new information, brought to light through a Right to Information query by Ujjainee Sharma and Trishna Senapaty, shows how little this feature has been used. There is perhaps inadequate awareness about it.

Aadhar is one of the rare UPA-era programmes that the Modi government has embraced enthusiastically.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.