New Delhi: With over a billion Aadhaar enrolments completed and empowered by a new law, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is looking to scale up operations and prepare for its next phase—one involving constant updates of data and ramping up capacity to eventually validate up to half a billion transactions daily, according to UIDAI chief executive A.B. Pandey.

As of Thursday, UIDAI has issued more than 1.03 billion Aadhaar cards, covering more than 85% of India’s population.

“Aadhaar is here to stay now that there is an Act. Earlier, when there was no Act, there may have been uncertainty over whether it will be continued with or not," Pandey said in an interview.

Aadhaar is now the mainstay of the government’s direct benefit transfer programme after the enactment of the The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.

All state benefits will now be directly transferred to intended beneficiaries’ bank accounts linked to the 12-digit biometric identity number provided by UIDAI, a step that is aimed at plugging leaks.

The Act has also removed uncertainty over a Supreme Court judgment that restricted the use of Aadhaar to select government schemes, including the cooking gas subsidy and payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

“Constant updates on biometrics, photographs, demography will happen every year. These could be around 12-13 crore every year. New enrolments will be made every year as children get enrolled," he added.

UIDAI anticipates that the larger move towards a cashless economy will increase the need for Aadhaar-based authentications wherein UIDAI will help the government and financial institutions identify a beneficiary using biometrics like fingerprint and iris recognition.

“Authentication will become a major job. Every day 40-50 lakh people are biometrically authenticated through Aadhaar and we have the capacity to scale it up to 10 crore authentications. But then tomorrow if we require 50 crore authentications, then we should be able to achieve it. This will become our major activity as payment banks come in. Then there will be ticket reservations, attendance, and Bharat Bill Payment System that will be depen- dant on this. It will become a very critical infrastructure," Pandey said.

The UIDAI will not charge for authenticating these transactions till December 2017, but there may be a rethink after that.

“As of now, this entire authentication process is fully funded by the government. We have decided no institution will be charged anything for a service till December 2017. After this date, a decision will be taken regarding this by the chairman and the members," Pandey said, pointing out that imposing fees on individuals will be equivalent to denying people the right to have Aadhaar.

In line with the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, a chairman and members will soon be appointed at UIDAI and the regulations will be notified in two parts to enforce the Act.

N.C. Saxena, a member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, said authenticating 10 million transactions daily may be a more realistic figure in the near term.

“Aadhaar has three major advantages. Firstly, it eliminates duplication. Secondly, benefits would become portable and lastly, the whole concept of dual pricing can be eliminated without any loss to consumers," he said.

“Even if 99% coverage is achieved by Aadhaar, it is a satisfactory figure and UIDAI should continue to fund it on its own as charging institutions for enrolments may not work," Saxena added.

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