Aadhaar moots UIDs for institutions

Calls for dummy UIDs & law on display of individual identity numbers

Stiff penalties to deter individuals from committing identity fraud such as trying to obtain multiple UIDs, setting up number issuing system are also on the agenda.

The move to assign  UIDs to companies and institutions is to facilitate symmetry in transactions between the residents and the respective entities, says Aadhaar. According to the authority, while dummy UID is for display in public without violation of anyone’s privacy, number issuing system is to help the registrar, who, needing to issue a number, submits enrollment information and request a number from central server. The server generates the ID number returning it to the registrar.

Further, Aadhaar, which expects UID system to live on for centuries, has suggested deactivation of UID association with the person following his death. One way to do it is to flag UID record as inactive on confirmation of death.

Furthermore, it plans to inactivate a person’s UID if  it has not been used for around 10 years, while, however, providing facility to activate his UID by a simple reactivation procedure which would involve authentication.  Keeping in mind various profiles of persons receiving UIDs, Aadhaar plans to keep UID simple so that residents can easily remember and recall their number, while, ensuring that it is carefully designed so as not to disclose personal information about resident including — regional, ethnic and age information. 

Aadhaar plans use of 12 digits and adopt Hindu-Arabic numeral system for the purpose. Also, Aadhaar will levy UID recovery service fee if a person loses his UID and to discourage repeated and frivolous applications of lost UID number.

Likewise, to make it tough to guess correctly valid ID assigned to anybody, Aadhaar plans to have humongous 80 billion IDs than maxium number of IDs needed at anytime. The idea behind sparseness of numbers, says Aadhaar, will make it difficult to easily guess numbers.