UIDAI: Over 125 crore citizens now have Aadhaar

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Friday stated that the Aadhaar project has crossed the 125 crore mark. This implies that over 1.25 billion residents of India now have the 12-digit unique identity, the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology said in an official statement. 

The statement added that the number was achieved due to the rapid increase in the use of Aadhaar as the primary identity document by the Aadhaar cardholders. This is clear from the fact that Aadhaar-based authentication services have been used nearly 37,000 crore times since its initiation. At present, UIDAI gathers about three crore authentication requests every day.

The citizens are also inclined to keep their details in Aadhaar updated. UIDAI recorded almost 331 crore successful Aadhaar updates, biometric and demographics, to date. At present, UIDAI receives about three-four lakh Aadhaar update request every day.

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Nawab Malik links Aadhaar to NPR

Even though the government on Tuesday assured people that updating the National Population Register (NPR) is not linked to the controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) in any way, NCP leader Nawab Malik has raised concerns over the exercise.

Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, he said that "there is more here than meets the eye". He said that the government has already collected Aadhaar data of 132 crore Indians and the census of citizens can be linked with the same; therefore, there is no need for the NPR exercise.

READ | NCP's Nawab Malik Links 'Aadhar' To NPR, Says 'there's More Here Than Meets The Eye'

'No link between NRP and NRC': Amit Shah

Home Minister Amit Shah in an interview ruled out any links between the contentious NRP and NRC. He said, "NPR is the register of population, NRC is the register of citizens. There is no link between the two and the two have different processes."

He further clarified that any information obtained through NPR cannot be used for the NRC process. Amit Shah further claimed that the NPR was started by the Congress government and the BJP government is just carrying it forward.

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(With inputs from ANI)