A new milestone was achieved for aadhaar with Lakshmamma from Tumkur, Karnataka receiving the 100,000th Aadhaar number.

“Crossing one lakh enrolments in this short span of time is a welcome milestone for us,” Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the UIDAI, said. “And the credit for this goes far beyond the UIDAI team. A lot of people – state government officials, the enrolling agencies, as well as the UIDAI team, its TDU (Technology Development Unit) , PMU (Project Management Unit), sabbatical resources and volunteers are working together, and put in substantial effort towards getting the enrolments done.”

On September 29th, 2010, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issued the first Aadhaar number to Ranjna Sadashiv Sonwane, a tribal woman from Tembhali village in Nandurbar, Maharashtra by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The issue of Aadhaar numbers to the residents of Tembhali marked the launch of the initiative, and the beginning of an ambitious operation to issue 600 million Aadhaar numbers in the next four years to Indians across the country.

Over these last six weeks, the UIDAI has rapidly ramped up enrolments for the Aadhaar number across seven states – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Life Insurance Corporation of India and Indira Gandhi National Open University have also come on board as registrars for Aadhaar numbers, and have started enrolments. More registrars are expected to begin Aadhaar enrolments in the next few weeks.