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Authentication of individuals using Aadhaar grew by 44 per cent to about 220 crore in August, the IT ministry said on Thursday. As of end August 2022, a cumulative number of 8,074.95 crore Aadhaar authentications have been carried out so far, as against 7,855.24 crore such authentications by the end of July, indicating rise in use of Aadhaar based services. "Aadhaar usage and adoption by residents is witnessing sizable growth indicative of how it is increasingly supporting ease of living for residents. In August, 219.71 crore authentication transactions were carried out via Aadhaar, a growth of more than 44 per cent against July 2022," the statement said. Around 1,000 social welfare schemes in the country run by both Centre and states have been notified to use Aadhaar till date. Aadhaar custodian Unique Identification Authority of India is in discussion with state government to onboard more services on Aadhaar platform. A majority of these monthly transactions were done by using .
Finance Secretary T V Somanathan on Wednesday appealed states and Union Territories to optimise use of Aadhaar within the existing legal framework for improving delivery of services to people. While speaking at a workshop organised by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Somanathan said Indians must be proud of the fact that Aadhaar was created by India, not copied from the western world. He said that everybody shares a social security number in the United States and it is not a state secret there. "We already have a supreme court judgment on this subject and there is a law. So, within the contours of that law and sticking within the parameters of the law, we should unabashedly do everything that will help us to maximize the potential of Aadhaar without having any sort of apprehension that something is wrong," Somanathan said. He appealed the government departments to maximize the potential of the scientific and administrative achievement -- Aadhaar. Government think-