The Number of People Registered for India’s Aadhaar Program Surpasses One Billion

The number of people registered for India’s  Aadhaar Program operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is the largest system of its kind in the world, surpassed one billion this April. NEC Corporation provides a large-scale biometrics identification system that utilizes fingerprints, face images, and iris images for this national identification system.

UIDAI is promoting the Aadhaar Program to gather and manage the names, addresses and biometric information of people in India in an effort to create a society in which the entire nation can enjoy equal access to public and financial services. Once a person registers for the system, he or she will receive an individual 12-digit number (ID). Public organizations and banks will use these numbers to identify people when they apply to receive social security benefits or open bank accounts.

NEC’s large-scale biometrics identification system uses three types of biometric information—fingerprints, face images, and iris images—to prevent people from being registered twice. This system can handle more than one million registrations per day by checking the registered biometric information for more than one billion people and comparing it to the biometric information of people seeking to register.

“It is important to make sure that the same ID is not issued twice in order to maintain a highly reliable national identification system,” said, Noritaka Taguma, General Manager, Transportation and City Infrastructure Division, NEC Corporation. “NEC’s biometrics identification system helps to stop people from pretending to be others, while simplifying procedures by checking the information of people seeking to register for the Aadhaar Program with greater accuracy and efficiency.”

NEC’s fingerprint and face identification technologies ranked first in the benchmark tests conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States. In addition, NEC also adjusted the identification algorithms for the biometric system for the Aadhaar Program in an effort to improve its identification accuracy.