About 500 missing children traced through Aadhaar: UIDAI

New Delhi, Nov 24 () As many as 500 missing children have been traced over the last few months through Aadhaar, the CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Ajay Bhushan Pandey, said today. "Over the last few months, more than 500 missing childrenhave been identified through Aadhaar," he said addressing asession at the Global Conference on Cyberspace (GCCS) 2017.Explaining this, he said this happened in instances wherea child found in an orphanage underwent Aadhaar enrolment andit was found that his/her 12-digit biometric identifier hadalready been made."...through that we are able to trace," Pandey said. On a lighter note, he said the script of classicBollywood potboilers about siblings separating and re-unitingafter decades would now have to be re-worked with Aadhaar inthe picture.India is among the nations with the largest number ofchildren in the world, with about 40 per cent of the 1.2billion population being below the age of 18, according to2011 Census.According to CRY (Child Rights and You), an NGO workingfor child rights, the number of children who went missing andremain untraced across the country increased by about 84 percent between 2013 and 2015. It quoted government data to sayabout 180 children go missing on an average every day.Speaking at the session on 'Digital Identity for All:Global Best Practices', Pandey further said the total savingso far on account of Aadhaar was over USD 10 billion as itslinkages to various government schemes had helped remove"ghosts and duplicates" from the system.Once Aadhaar is linked to more government programmes andsubsidies, the savings could be USD 10 billion every year, hesaid.Total Aadhaar base currently stands at 1.19 billion,Pandey said adding that99 per cent of adults have Aadhaar. SR MBIMR