Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the authority tasked for the Aadhaar scheme, has now decided to levy charges for authentication service from requesting entities.
Since, none of the entities, including private players and government owned, who want to use this authentication from UIDAI, would pay the charges from their own pockets, it would be passed on the all Aadhaar holders.
So every time an Aadhaar number holder wants to do an eKYC or even yes or no authentication, she will have to pay the money. And this includes paying charges for availing ration from the public distribution system (PDS) shops as well since the buyer is required to undergo biometric-based Aadhaar authentication. This is because these shops, which are part of the PDS are still private entities, who are mandated to use Aadhaar authentication.