Thu, Sep 08 2016. 05 19 PM IST
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announces the milestone in a tweet
Komal Gupta and Kshitiz Goliya
New Delhi: Enrolment in the government’s Aadhaar card scheme has reached 105 crore, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a tweet on Thursday.
“I am delighted to share with you all that today out of a population of 125 Crore, India has 105 Crore #Aadhaar holders @UIDAI,” Prasad tweeted.
Accoding to Prasad, 98% of Indians have been enrolled for Aadhaar.
The announcement came soon after J. Satyanarayana, the new part-time chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), and part-time members Rajesh Jain and Anand Deshpande were administered their oaths of office.
Satyanarayana succeeds Nandan Nilekani, who was the first chairperson of UIDAI and held the position from 2009 to 2014. The post of chairman had been vacant since Nilekani quit.
Jain is founder and managing director of netCORE solutions, an IT-based firm, while Deshpande is founder and chief executive officer of Persistent Systems, which specialises in software product development.
UIDAI enrollments rose by more than a crore of within a month, up from 103.8 crore by July end, with the current rate enrollment touching 6 lakh per day, UIDAI said in a statement.
Overall, 82% of Indians have been enrolled, which besides adults also includes children, at the current rate of 6 lakh enrollments per day.
While 17 states have more than 90% aadhaar coverage, the rest of 11 are still between 75-90 percent.
UIDAI has already missed two deadlines of June 2015 and December 2015 for universal aadhaar coverage.
Prasad also administered the oath of Office and secrecy to newly appointed UIDAI part-time Chairman J Satyanarayana, who became the first person to occupy the post since Nandan Nilekani resigned in March 2014.
About 3.8 lakh authentication devices were deployed in August 2016 and 241.6 crore authentication transactions have happened since the service started in 2013, UIDAI said.
The government has paid Rs25,113 crore under Direct Benefit Transfer of LPG (DBTL) or Pahal scheme, as of August 31, leading to savings of Rs22,000 crore in last two financial years, UIDAI said in a statement.
The total number of Unique aadhaars linked to bank accounts stood at 31.7 crore at the end of August.
Total numbers of banks using Aadhaar Payments Bridge (APB) stood at 786, with 131 crore transaction done using the APB.
APB is a payment system implemented by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which uses Aadhaar number as a central key for transferring the government subsidies in the aadhaar linked of the intended beneficiaries.
Mint had earlier reported that UIDAI has been organising special camps to increase the rate of enrolment.