About UIDAI

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a statutory authority established under the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (“Aadhaar Act 2016”) on 12 July 2016 by the Government of India, under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The Aadhaar Act 2016 has been amended by the Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2019 (14 of 2019) w.e.f. 25.07.2019.

UIDAI was created to issue Unique Identification numbers (UID), named as "Aadhaar", to all residents of India. The UID had to be (a) robust enough to eliminate duplicate and fake identities, and (b) verifiable and authenticable in an easy, cost-effective way. As on 29th September 2023, the Authority has generated 138.08 crore Aadhaar numbers to the residents of India.

Under the Aadhaar Act 2016, UIDAI is responsible for Aadhaar enrolment and authentication, including operation and management of all stages of Aadhaar life cycle, developing the policy, procedure, and system for issuing Aadhaar numbers to individuals and perform authentication and the security of identity information and authentication records of individuals.

To learn more about UIDAI, please visit the Organizational Structure sections of the website.

Historical Background

On March 03, 2006, approval was given by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India for the project titled ‘Unique Identification for BPL Families. Accordingly, a Processes Committee was set up on July 03, 2006, to suggest the process for updating, modification, addition, and deletion of data and fields from the core database to be created under the Unique Identification for BPL Families project. This Committee, on November 26, 2006, prepared a paper known as ‘Strategic Vision Unique Identification of Residents’. Based thereupon, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) was set up on December 04, 2006, to collate the National Population Register under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Unique Identification Number project of the Department of Information Technology.

Before its establishment as a statutory authority, UIDAI was functioning as an attached office of the then Planning Commission (now NITI Aayog) vide its Gazette Notification No.-A-43011/02/2009-Admn.I) Doc Type:PDF Doc size:0.4MB dated 28th January 2009. The first UID number was issued on 29 September 2010 to a resident of Nandurbar, Maharashtra. On 12 September 2015, the Government revised the Allocation of Business Rules to attach the UIDAI to the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) of the then Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.