Jammu, Apr 10: The Jammu and Kashmir Government has launched a Centralised Aadhaar Data Vault to strengthen digital governance, prevent leakages in welfare schemes and ensure timely delivery of benefits to genuine beneficiaries.
The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo, who directed departments to identify more government services that could be integrated with the new platform.
The meeting was attended by Additional Chief Secretary Finance Shailendra Kumar, Managing Director of J&K Bank Amitava Chatterjee, Commissioner Secretary Information and Planning R. Alice Vaz and Director General, Economics and Statistics, Ather Hussain Qadri, besides officials from NIC and various banks.
Dulloo said the platform should also be used by banks to streamline insurance claim settlements under the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana schemes by enabling instant verification of death records.
He said the system would help identify cases where pensions, social security assistance and rations under the Public Distribution System continue to be availed even after the death of beneficiaries, thereby helping the government prevent misuse of public funds.
The Chief Secretary also asked the National Informatics Centre to make the platform a single gateway for departments and institutions to carry out Aadhaar verification and eligibility checks.
Officials informed the meeting that the Aadhaar Data Vault has already been integrated with the Civil Registration System, including birth and death records, and would function as a secure Aadhaar Data Vault-as-a-Service platform.
The system has been linked with the Office of the Registrar General of India through application programming interfaces for real-time access to records. It will also allow different departments to share data through standardised APIs without requiring separate agreements.
According to officials, the new system will function as a “single source of truth” and operate on a “Single Token per Aadhaar” framework to prevent duplication and fraudulent claims across schemes and departments.
Describing the initiative as a major governance reform, Dulloo said the government was committed to using technology for data-driven decision-making and ensuring that welfare benefits reach the intended beneficiaries in a timely and transparent manner.
