Since the first announcement in September 2010, more than 1 crore Aadhar IDs have been issued by the Unique ID Authority, and over the next five years, it intends to issue 600 million UIDs. At the Aadhaar Development Track conference organized by NASSCOM in Bangalore yesterday, key personnel from the authority including Head of Technology Srikanth Nadhamuni, Chief Product Manager Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, Chief Architect, enlightened developers about how the system actually works. The UID Number The UID number, which is the key demographic element of the system, is a randomized 12 digit number which is independent of the user’s data, meaning that it does not depict any of the information provided by the user such as a region code or his/her date of birth, which might make it guessable. It does not follow a regional bifurcation unlike systems where a set of digits are fixed for region codes. The 11 digits are random numbers while the 12th digit is a checksum to authenticate them. The main role of the Unique ID authority is to enroll citizens for Aadhaar with the help of partner agencies, and develop and deploy an authentication system, for various other agencies who want to deploy Aadhaar. Enrollment Stage - Demographic: At the time of enrollment, a citizen is required to fill 4 compulsory fields: Name, Gender, Date of Birth and Address. There are two optional fields as well, Email address and Mobile number. - Biometric: In addition to this demographic information, Biometric information is also…
