Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI) drops Monitoring agency plan

Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI) drops Monitoring agency plan

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-II- Governance

In News

• UIDAI was seeking to hire a social media agency that will employ ‘social listening’ tools to monitor and influence conversations on Aadhaar on Facebook and Twitter.
• However, it has informed the Supreme Court -which is hearing a plea objecting such a proposal – that it has decided to withdraw hiring Social media monitoring agency

About UIDAI

• UIDAI was created with the objective to issue Unique Identification numbers (UID), named as “Aadhaar”, to all residents of India that is (a) robust enough to eliminate duplicate and fake identities, and (b) can be verified and authenticated in an easy, cost-effective way.
• UIDAI is a statutory authority established under the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
• Prior to its establishment as a statutory authority, UIDAI was functioning as an attached office of the then Planning Commission (now NITI Aayog)
• Under the Aadhaar Act 2016, UIDAI is responsible for
  • Aadhaar enrolment and authentication, including operation and management of all stages of Aadhaar life cycle, 
  • Developing the policy, procedure and system for issuing Aadhaar numbers to individuals and 
  • Perform authentication and 
  • To ensure the security of identity information and authentication records of individuals.
• It comes under the Electronics & IT ministry.