Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
By: Deepak Maggu
In the first four months (April to July) of the current fiscal year, the Unique Identification Authority of India enrolled more than 79 lakh kids in the age range of 0 to 5. This is a part of an ongoing push to expand the Bal Aadhaar initiative's reach to children aged 0 to 5 and enable them to benefit from a variety of programmes.
In the first four months (April to July) of the current fiscal year, the Unique Identification Authority of India enrolled more than 79 lakh kids in the age range of 0 to 5. This is a part of an ongoing push to expand the Bal Aadhaar initiative's reach to children aged 0 to 5 and enable them to benefit from a variety of programmes. By the end of March 2022, 2.64 crore kids in the 0-5 age range had Bal Aadhaar; by the end of July 2022, this figure had risen to 3.43 crore.
Bal Aadhaar registration is moving forward extremely quickly across the nation. In areas like Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, enrollment of kids in the 0-5 age range has already covered more than 70% of the targeted age group. In many other states and UTs, including Jammu & Kashmir, Mizoram, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, and Lakshadweep, registration of children (0–5 years old) has also gone up remarkably well.
If we talk about the overall Aadhaar enrollment, then from September 2010 to March 2021, 129.04 crore Aadhaar enrollments have been done, in which 2,37,78,200 children below 5 years have been enrolled. The current Aadhaar saturation rate is almost 94%. Adult Aadhaar saturation is very close to 100%. Also, if we look at the data year after year, there were double-digit enrollments from 2011 to 2017. From 2011 to 2017, approximately 80% of the population, or 113 crore Aadhaar enrollments, were completed, which is why we see a decline in Aadhaar enrollment after 2017.
However, after the formation of the new government in May 2014, Aadhaar started being used extensively in various services and economic activities of the government. The government's goal was to integrate and facilitate services through Aadhaar and reduce corruption.
To achieve this goal, the DBT scheme was merged with all government payment schemes, such as the LPG gas subsidy and MGNREGA. Along with this, bank accounts were opened under the Jan-Dhan Yojana and they were also linked with Aadhaar.
After linking bank accounts with Aadhaar, PAN cards and now voter ID cards are also being linked with Aadhaar. As of March 2021, 73 crore Aadhaars have been linked with the bank accounts.
In order to make the payments system easy and accessible, the Aadhaar enabled payment system AEPS was introduced by the government. Till 31st March 2021, over 938.14 crore successful transactions have been done using the AEPS platform from nearly 27.86 lakh microATMs provided by 119 banks and the Department of Posts. It is pertinent to note that during 2020-21, about 392 crore AEPS transactions were performed as compared to 236 crore in 2019-20, which is about 66% growth over the last FY. This had immensely facilitated providing door-step banking services and helped mitigate the hardships of the people due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
