Features of Aadhaar

Uniqueness

This is achieved through the process of demographic and biometric de-duplication. The de-duplication process compares the  demographic and biometric information, collected during the process of enrolment, of an individual seeking to enroll, with the records in the UIDAI database, to verify if the said individual is already in the database or not. An individual needs to enrol for Aadhaar only once and after de-duplication only one Aadhaar shall be generated. In case, an Aadhaar number holder enrols more than once, the subsequent enrolments will be rejected.

Portability

Aadhaar gives nationwide portability as it can be authenticated anywhere on-line. This is critical as millions of Indians migrate from one state to another or from rural area to urban centres etc.

Random number

Aadhaar number is a random number devoid of any intelligence. Individual willing to enrol has to provide minimal demographic along with biometric information during the enrolment process. The Aadhaar enrolment process does not capture details like caste, religion, income, health, geography, etc.

Scalable technology architecture

The UID architecture is open and scalable. Aadhaar number holder’s data is stored centrally and authentication can be done online from anywhere in the country. Aadhaar Authentication service is built to handle 100 million authentications a day.

Open source technologies

Open source architecture precludes dependence on specific computer hardware, specific storage, specific OS, specific database vendor, or any specific vendor technologies to scale. Such applications are built using open source or open technologies and structured to address scalability in a vendor neutral manner and allow co-existence of heterogeneous hardware within same application.