Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of Hotmail, has claimed that the Aadhaar project was carried out with a total expenditure of Rs 11,385 crore ($1.3 billion) when instead it could have been done for just Rs 175.16 crore ($20 million).
Bhatia spoke about the Aadhar project on a talk show called Prakhar Ke Pravachan, which is hosted by Prakhar Gupta.
He further said that Aadhaar project is “1.3 billion dollars ill spent” and also questioned whether all the biometric details that were taken are being used.
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was created to issue Unique Identification numbers (UID), named as “Aadhaar”, to all residents of India.
The entrepreneur then put forward his idea on how the project could have been carried out back then at a fraction of the cost incurred.
“A better way to solve unique identification of an individual would be video and voice technology which every smartphone user has,” he added.
Giving an example of airports, he said, “The moment you walk inside an airport, there is no need to show a card. The system will recognise you and say, ‘you have been verified’,” he said adding that “this is technology, and it can be built at less expense.”
Bhatia said that the project could have been built “under 20 million bucks”.
During the podcast he also claimed that whoever carried the project is “not a technologist, and they don’t know technology.”