Govt plans to link details of 100 million workers with Aadhaar: Report

Read: India facing a jobs data crisis: Here's how it can be fixed

The move may also help improve delivery of services related to pensions, employee provident fund and insurance for workers before next year’s general election, officials told the paper.

"Other than the jobs record, the move will speed-up delivery of services like payment of pension and faster settlement of PF claims. PF number portability will be smoother with Aadhaar linkage as the subscriber ID already has the bank account and PAN linked to it," another official told the paper.

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), which has an active subscriber base of nearly 60 million, has asked its regional offices in over 120 locations to take up Aadhaar linking on a priority.

The Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) is providing a financial incentive scheme to encourage companies to link Aadhaar numbers of their employees with subscriber details while enrolling them for health benefits under the corporation. ESCI provides healthcare facilities to nearly 40 million industrial workers.

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The sizable overlap of beneficiaries under EPFO and ESIC — the two key sources for tracking employment growth in the formal sector — makes it hard for the government to answer criticism, the official told the paper, adding that employee details of less than 35 percent of combined EPFO and ESIC subscribers are linked to Aadhaar.

Job creation has become a contentious issue with political parties ahead of the 2019 general elections. Every year, at least 12 million people are entering the labour market and job creation is not keeping pace with it.

To reduce the rate of underemployment and unemployment, India will need to create 10 million jobs per annum until 2030. As per a research report by Motilal Oswal, this roughly translates to 830,000 jobs every month for the next 12 years.