UIDAI

UIDAI

Subject: National Organisations

Context: Senior bureaucrat Saurbah Garg has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as part of a bureaucratic reshuffle effected by the Centre.

Concept:

• The Unique Identification Authority of India or UIDAI is an agency under the central government of India mandated to collect demographic and biometric information of the country’s residents, store the data in a central database.
• The UIDAI is mandated to assign a 12-digit unique identification (UID) number (Aadhaar) to all the residents of India
• UIDAI was established as per the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. The act is also called the Aadhaar Act 2016 in short.
• It comes under the Electronics & IT ministry.
• As per the 2016 Act, UIDAI is accountable for the authentication and enrolment of Aadhaar, and also to safeguard the data protection of identity information of individuals.