Over 3.84 lakh Aadhaar numbers cancelled on misuse

New Delhi: The government today said that as many as 384,237 Aadhaar numbers have been cancelled because of misuse by operators under the biometric exception clause.

"A scrutiny of all biometric exception enrolments was done and this has led to the cancellation of the 3,84,237 Aadhar numbers issued," Ministry of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Planning Rajeev Shukla said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. It has come to the notice of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that the enrolment client application, which has provision to enrol persons with biometric exceptions, was misused by some operators, he added. On measures taken to prevent attempts at incorrect biometric exception enrolments, Shukla said: "Enrolments done with full biometric exceptions are screened through a process of manual verification to check if the exceptions actually exist." UIDAI is implementing the Aadhaar project in partnership with various State/UT governments/Financial Institutions. It has been mandated to generate and issue identification numbers to all the residents of India. UIDAI is authorised to enrol, through multiple registrar up to 60 crore residents by March 2014. The rest of the population will be covered by Registrar General of India (RGI) under National Population Register (NPR) process. PTI