80% bank accounts, 60% SIM have been linked with Aadhaar
A month before the expiry of the deadline, around 80% of bank accounts and 60% of mobile connections have been linked with national biometric identifier Aadhaar, according to a senior official at UIDAI. Aadhaar is required as an identity proof of residents by various government and non-government entities. With over 1.2 billion residents already enrolled for Aadhaar, the programme today is the world's largest biometric database.
Linking Aadhaar to almost everything is mandatory
The government has mandated submission of the 12-digit unique identity number by every bank account holder by March 31, 2018 to weed out unaccounted wealth. For the same purpose, Aadhaar linking with income-tax permanent account number or PAN has also been made mandatory. By March 31, all mobile SIM cards are also to be linked with Aadhaar to establish the identity of mobile phone users.
Aadhaar linking in numbers
Out of the 109.9 crore banks accounts, almost 87 crore have been linked with Aadhaar. Of this, 58 crore have already been verified while in case of the rest the authentication process is underway. The official said that as against the 142.9 crore active mobile connections, 85.7 crore have already been linked with Aadhaar.
Meanwhile, you can link Aadhaar using Virtual ID too
Further, the UIDAI recently announced a new concept of Virtual ID which an Aadhaar-card holder can generate from its website and give for various purposes, including SIM verification, instead of sharing the actual 12-digit biometric ID.
