Overview
- Minister of State Jitin Prasada told the Lok Sabha on February 4 that UIDAI has deactivated more than 2.5 crore Aadhaar numbers belonging to deceased persons.
- India Today reports the pace surged in recent months, with deactivations in roughly six months exceeding the total from the previous 14 years.
- Aadhaar now has about 134 crore active holders, highlighting the scale of maintaining an accurate and secure database.
- Safeguards cited by the government include biometric lock and unlock, face authentication with liveness detection, encrypted Aadhaar Data Vaults, and offline verification tools such as secure QR codes and paperless e-KYC.
- UIDAI’s process matches death records with at least a 90% name match and a 100% gender match and checks for any post‑death authentication, while families can report deaths via the myAadhaar portal and a new app for secure credential sharing.