HEADLINES IN THE INDIAN EXPRESS
Aadhaar has been in news for various reasons and presently a notification issued by Bureau of Immigration, Home Ministry says it is not a valid identification document for Indians traveling to Nepal and Bhutan.
Understanding Aadhar
Aadhaar is a paperless online anytime-anywhere identity assigned to a resident to cover his/her entire lifetime. The verification of his identity is done online with the help of authentication devices which connect to UIDAI’s Central Identity Repository and return only a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response to the basic query-“Is the person who he/she claims to be?” based on the data available with UIDAI. This is achieved through the process of demographic and biometric de-duplication. The de-duplication process compares the resident’s demographic and biometric information, collected during the process of enrolment, with the records in the UIDAI database to verify if the resident is already in the database or not. An individual needs to enroll for Aadhaar only once and after de-duplication, only one Aadhaar shall be generated. In case, the resident enrolls more than once, the subsequent enrolments will be rejected. Aadhaar number is a random number devoid of any intelligence. A person willing to enroll has to provide minimal demographic along with biometric information during the enrollment process. The Aadhaar enrolment process does not capture details like caste, religion, income, health, geography etc. The following events around the constitutional validity of Aadhaar remained in focus.
Aadhar and the Travel Advisory for Bhutan and Nepal
Indians can travel to Nepal and Bhutan — both countries for which they don’t need visas — if they possess a valid national passport having a validity of 6 months and election ID card issued by the Election Commission. Moreover, to ease travel, persons over 65 and below 15 years can show documents with photographs to confirm their age and identity. These include PAN card, driving license, Central Government Health Service (CGHS) card and ration card but not Aadhaar. “Aadhaar (UID) card is not an acceptable travel document for travel to Nepal/Bhutan,” a communique issued by the Ministry said.
REFERENCES
1. Embassy of India, Bhutan: https://www.indianembassythimphu.bt/pages.php?id=52
2.Unique Identification Authority of India: https://uidai.gov.in/your-aadhaar/about-aadhaar/feature-of-aadhaar.html
3. Bureau of Immigration, Ministry of Home Affairs: http://boi.gov.in/
Please Note: The page is informatory. The concerned Ministry notification is the final statement on the subject.
