16.7 lakh Aadhaar numbers generated so far: Govt

As many as 16,79,549 Aadhaar numbers have been generated in these States and Union Territories, Minister of State for Planning, Ashwini Kumar said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

Aadhaar is generated by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) by collecting biometric and demographic details of citizens. Among States, Karnataka generated 7,25,194 Aadhaar numbers, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 4,03,925, and Tripura at 2,36,723, he said.

Enrollments of residents are conducted by the Registrar of UIDAI, which consists of central and state agencies and public sector banks and financial institutions, he said. No problems during the enrollment have been reported so far, he added.

Kumar said a number of processes have been put in place to ensure that data collected by UIDAI is not accessed in unauthorised manner. In another reply, Kumar said the Ministry of Minority Affairs submitted a proposal to the Planning Commission for seeking "in-principle" approval of a scheme for containing population decline among the Parsi community.

"The Planning Commission suggested to the Ministry to withdraw the scheme in the present form as the problem of decline in Parsi community is mostly socio-cultural and rarely medical in nature as established by the Indian Council of Medical Research in their study in 2008 titled Fertility Assessment of Parsi Community in Mumbai," he said.