The Unique Identification Authority of India operates Aadhaar, the world's largest biometric identity system, with approximately 1,340 million (mn) live Aadhaar holders as of March 2026. The system has completed around 170 billion (bn) authentication transactions since its inception. Aadhaar has become a foundational identity for delivery of public welfare and services across central and state government schemes, supported by near universal coverage and widespread adoption. It provides a digitally verifiable identity enabling access to banking, telecom, credit and insurance services.

More than 3,100 Direct Benefit Transfer schemes and over 360 public services currently use Aadhaar based authentication and verification, which has helped ensure targeted and transparent delivery while eliminating duplicate and ineligible beneficiaries. The linkage between Aadhaar and bank accounts facilitates secure direct transfer of benefits into beneficiaries' accounts, enhancing efficiency and accountability in governance. The authority clarified that it does not collect or retain information about the purpose for which entities use Aadhaar for beneficiary identification. This purpose agnosticism underpins the platform's utility across diverse schemes.

Given the large scale of Aadhaar integration with public service delivery, authentication failures can occur for reasons such as connectivity issues, biometric or demographic mismatches, invalid one time passwords, device related faults and other technical factors. Grievances are addressed in a time bound manner in coordination with the concerned scheme implementing ministries and departments. UIDAI has undertaken measures to mitigate authentication related issues by enabling multi modal authentication modes including biometric, one time password and face authentication, facilitating periodic updation of biometric and demographic details, and strengthening the authentication infrastructure.

The Aadhaar Act, 2016 provides that no eligible beneficiary shall be denied welfare benefits or services due to non assignment of Aadhaar or inability to undergo Aadhaar authentication, and alternate viable means of identification are provided in such cases. The authority stated that these steps have helped ensure seamless delivery of welfare benefits to eligible beneficiaries. The Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Jitin Prasada, submitted this information in Rajya Sabha on 27 March 2026.