The Authority behind Aadhaar: what the Unique Identification Authority of India maintains

Background

Aadhaar is the world's largest biometric identity system maintained by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which works under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
There are about 134 crore live Aadhaar holders, and more than 17,000 crore authentication transactions have been completed.
Over 3,100 Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes and more than 360 public services use Aadhaar-based authentication or verification.
UIDAI does not collect, retain or maintain any information about the purpose for which an authentication was carried out.
To reduce failures it has enabled multi-modal authentication, that is biometric, OTP and face authentication.
The Aadhaar Act, 2016 provides that no eligible beneficiary shall be denied welfare benefits or services because of non-assignment of Aadhaar or an authentication failure, and alternate means of identification must then be offered.