Unique ID number to be issued in few days: Nandan Nilekani

Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Nandan Nilekani today said the Unique Identification Number, renamed as 'Aadhaar',  would be issued in a few days to Indian residents.

"We will issue the UID numbers in a few days," Nilekani told reporters on the sidelines of AIMA convention in Kolkata.

He said in the first four years, 600 million people would be covered and the UID number would be useful for a number of applications like financial inclusion.

The UIDAI had discussed with RBI for preparing the roadmap for financial inclusion with help of micro-ATMs, he said.

A unique eco-system would be created, he said, where the authority would be surrounded by registrars which would be either banks, oil companies or public sector units.

Nilekani said a big challenge which UID was facing was of re-duplication. Giving UID number was akin to giving mobile identity to a person using biometric technology.

He said approaching the authority for a second time would be made a penal offence.

Nilekani said the online verification of the UID number would be done in five to six seconds and would also work on the mobile network.

To a query, he said implementation of the project would also require stable internal security.