GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Ministry of Planning 

RAJYA SABHA
UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2500
ANSWERED ON MARCH 19, 2015 

QUESTION
Accuracy and Integrity of Aadhaar Database 
 

2500. SHRI RAJEEV CHANDRASEKHAR 

Will the Minister of PLANNING be pleased to state:- 

(a)   Government’s assessment on the accuracy and integrity of the Aadhaar database created thus far; 

(b)   whether Government is aware of various reports of fraudulent entries, due to incorrect and weak verification process that have entered the database in large numbers; and 

(c)    to what extent would be Government guarantee the integrity of the Aadhaar database? 

ANSWER
MINISTER OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE) FOR
MINISTRY OF PLANNING AND MINISTER OF STATE FOR DEFENCE
(RAO INDERJIT SINGH) 

(a) to (c): The methodology for generation of unique identity number (Aadhaar) for residents of India involves usage of certain basic demographic (name, age, gender and address) and biometric information (ten finger prints, two iris images) and a photograph to uniquely identify a resident after a process of biometric de-duplication. The process of biometric de-duplication helps in ensuring uniqueness to a high degree of accuracy, exceeding 99%. The data collected during enrolment process is immediately encrypted and transmitted to Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) of UIDAI for further processing. After a series of validation/quality checks, the residents’ biometrics are matched against the existing database of UIDAI, on a 1:N matching basis, to determine if the resident has previously enrolled. Currently, over 700 trillion matches are carried out each day to ensure exhaustive de-duplication. The process involves various stages such as automated data validation, manual quality checks, demographic de-duplication, and biometric de-duplication. More than 9 crore enrollment packets have been rejected so far, that did not meet the quality and de-duplication criteria. Government is fully alive to the need of constantly monitoring and observing quality and veracity of Aadhaar database, and a dedicated Fraud Investigation and Analytics team has been deployed to ensure compliance with various fraud detection rules. Further, periodic exploratory data analysis of UIDAI database is undertaken to detect any fraudulent patterns in the system.