Aadhaar is the world's largest biometric identity system maintained by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) with approximately 134 crore live Aadhaar holders.

It has completed more than 17,000 crore authentication transactions.

Aadhaar for public welfare:

Aadhaar has emerged as a foundational identity for delivery of benefits and services across Central and State Government schemes. It is supported by near-universal coverage and widespread adoption.

Over 3,100 Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes and more than 360 public services currently use Aadhaar-based authentication/verification. This has helped state ensure targeted, transparent, and leak-proof delivery while eliminating duplicate and ineligible beneficiaries.

Further, Aadhaar-bank linkage facilitates direct and secure transfer of benefits into beneficiaries’ accounts, enhancing efficiency and accountability in governance.

For Aadhaar Number Holders, it provides a trusted, digitally verifiable identity, ensuring inclusion in government schemes and enabling seamless access to services in sectors such as banking, telecom, credit, and insurance among others.

Aadhaar as a purpose-agnostic identity platform:

While Aadhaar is widely used across numerous welfare benefit schemes, UIDAI doesn’t collect, retain, or maintain any information regarding the purpose of authentication carried out by scheme-implementing entities using Aadhaar for beneficiary identification.

Grievances in Aadhaar authentication

Considering the huge scale of Aadhar’s integration with public service delivery framework, Aadhaar authentication failures may occur due to various factors such as connectivity issues, biometric or demographic mismatches, invalid One-Time Password (OTP), device-related issues, and other technical reasons.

Such grievances are addressed in a time-bound manner in coordination with the concerned scheme-implementing Ministries/Departments.

Further, the Unique Identification Authority of India has undertaken several measures to mitigate authentication-related issues. This includes enabling multi-modal authentication modes (biometric, OTP and face authentication), facilitating periodic updation of biometric and demographic details, and strengthening the authentication infrastructure.

This has helped ensure seamless delivery of welfare benefits to eligible beneficiaries.

Further, the Aadhaar Act, 2016 provides that no eligible beneficiary shall be denied welfare benefits or services, either due to non-assignment of Aadhaar or inability to undergo Aadhaar authentication, including authentication failures. In such cases, alternate and viable means of identification are provided.

This information was submitted by Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Shri Jitin Prasada in Rajya Sabha on 27.03.2026

***

MSZ

(Release ID: 2246220) Visitor Counter : 236