Aadhaar Authentication amendment to improve transparency and inclusivity in decision-making process
By TIOL News Service
NEW DELHI, FEB 28, 2025: THE Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) yesterday launched Aadhaar Good Governance portal to streamline approval process for Aadhaar authentication requests. This is in sync with an effort to make Aadhaar more people-friendly, enable ease of living, and enable better access to services for people.
The Aadhaar Good Governance portal was launched by S. Krishnan, Secretary , MeitY in the presence of Bhuvnesh Kumar, CEO UIDAI, Inder Pal Singh Sethi Director General of NIC, Manish Bhardwaj, DDG UIDAI, Amod Kumar, DDG UIDAI and other senior officials from MeitY, UIDAI and NIC.
Enhance Ease of Living and Service Accessibility
The online platform (http://swik.meity.gov.in) comes into effect, after Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance (Social Welfare, Innovation, Knowledge) Amendment Rules, 2025 under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 was notified in late January 2025. This amendment has been done to help improve transparency and inclusivity in the decision-making process.
Aadhaar is considered as the most trusted digital ID in the world. In the past decade, more than a billion Indians have expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves over 100 billion times. Expansion of the scope of Aadhaar authentication, as envisaged in the amendment, will further improve ease of living and facilitate hassle-free access to newer services of their choice.
Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY highlighted that with the launch of this platform and continuous improvement of other processes and systems around it, we hope to expedite the process of adding more use cases in the domain of good governance and ease of living.
Bhuvnesh Kumar, CEO UIDAI underlined how Aadhaar is facilitating the growth of India's digital economy. He said Aadhaar is an enabler of good governance, and resident centricity is the focus of UIDAI. The Aadhaar good governance portal has been developed to facilitate ease of submission and approval proposals by entities in accordance with the prescribed rules.
Seamless Authentication for Public Interest Services
The amendment enables both government and non-government entities to avail Aadhaar authentication service for providing various services in the public interest for related specific purposes like enablement of innovation, spread of knowledge, promoting ease of living of residents and enabling better access to services for them. This will help both the service providers as well as the service seekers to have trusted transactions.
The fresh amendment enables Aadhaar number holders to avail hassle free services from several sectors including hospitality, healthcare, credit rating bureau, e-commerce players, educational institutions and aggregator service providers. Service providers too will find it helpful for a range of things including staff attendance, customer onboarding, e-KYC verification, exam registrations etc.
Portal to Offer Step-by-Step Guide for Authentication Requests
The portal shall work as a resource rich guide, and offer detailed SOP for authentication seeking entities on how to apply and how to onboard for Aadhaar authentication.
Face Authentication may also be integrated in the customer facing apps of private entities, which will enable anytime anywhere, authentication.
As part of its commitment to make Aadhaar people-friendly and enable ease of living and better access to services for citizens, the Ministry had proposed rules to enable Aadhaar authentication by entities other than Government Ministries and Departments. The proposed amendments were posted on the Ministry website and comments were invited from the stakeholders and the general public during April and May 2023.
