Children from the age of three years may soon be eligible for Aadhaar enrollment. The idea was floated in a three-day-long conference on the future of Aadhaar. Currently, the biometrics of children at five years are taken. UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg described this idea as one of the major takeaways from the conference.
The present norm is that an Aadhaar number is given to children at birth to up to five years of age, but that is linked to their parents. Biometrics are taken only after the child turns five and have to be updated at age 15. During a presentation at the conference, Professor Anil K Jain from the Michigan State University recommended that the minimum age of capturing biometrics should be reduced from five to three years.
Professor Jain cited many reasons for the same. One reason given was the alarming number of children who go missing in India. To make a case for a unique identity for children at three, he also said that the idea would help in determining which child has been vaccinated and which child avails the government’s food programme.
He added that 25 million children are born every year in India and hence 125 million children at any point in time do not have Aadhaar of their own till they turn five. Jain is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Michigan State University.
Other major takeaways of the conference were for the body to become much more resident-centric and citizen-centric and focus on the ‘first mile – the citizen’. UIDAI CEO Saurabh Garg also mentioned new technologies like face recognition, voice recognition and how fingerprints can be used on smart devices to authenticate Aadhaar.
Earlier, a report suggested that as many as 500 missing children were traced through Aadhaar, former UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey had said in 2017 during a session at the Global Conference on Cyberspace.
