An affidavit filed by the Centre on Friday in the Supreme Court makes a case for Aadhaar by providing official statistics of the impact Aadhaar had on a multitude of welfare schemes and benefits across the country.
The government annexes a World Bank report of 2016 titled “Digital Dividends” saying that Aadhaar would save $11 billion annually if applied to social programmes and welfare distribution.
The affidavit said the total recorded savings to the Government of India through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme alone has been ₹49,560 crore in just two years — 2014-15 and 2015-16.
The government then gives detailed instances of how Aadhaar has benefited welfare and pension schemes cutting across all walks of life.
It said that in the targeted delivery of food grains under PDS, seeding Aadhaar has led to the deletion of 2.33 crore fake ration cards and saved ₹14,000 crore up to December 2016.
The implementation of Aadhaar based DBT in the PAHAL scheme has empowered residents to receive the subsidy amount directly into their Aadhaar-linked bank account. In this process more than 3 crore fake/duplicate LPG connections were weeded out. This has resulted in saving over ₹26,000 crore up to December 2016.
Seeding of Aadhaar with Jeevan Pramaan has seen 71.17 lakh pensioners use the scheme in 2016.
With the enabling of e-KYC, over 7.35 crore bank accounts were opened. Total bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar as on May 31, 2017 is 47.25 crore. Jandhan accounts are estimated to cover 99.9% of the households in the country. Of the newly opened 28.44 crore Jandhan accounts, over 18.97 crore accounts have used Aadhaar, the government said.
Aadhaar have been linked to over 8.80 crore active MNREGS workers of the existing database of 10.38 crore active workers.
In the National Social Assistance Programme (SAP), Aadhaar have been linked to over 1.47 crore pensioners of the existing database of 2.83 crore. Aadhaar has been linked to over 1.71 crore UAN of the existing database of 11.18 crore UAN, the government said.
Aadhaar-based digital signatures are allowed to be used in National Pension Scheme (NPS) accounts and for getting a new or updated Permanent Account Number (PAN) card.
Over 73 lakh individuals have availed digi-lockers and uploaded over 83 lakh documents. Over 47.25 crore people are enabled to use door-step banking and this system currently processes over 5 crore transactions every month. Over 1.36 crore residents have obtained passport using their Aadhaar.
Aadhaar has enabled Income Tax payers to e-verify their I-T returns using Aadhaar OTP authentication. Over 24 crore SIMs have been issued using the Aadhaar e-KYC service.
Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) is now available at 660 organisations, over 2.24 lakh registered employees and over 6000 active devices.
