Co-WIN App Registration: Aadhaar Card Details Not Needed, Says Govt

The government has explained that people will not have to give their Aadhaar details to register to the Co-WIN App which was created to streamline the COVID-19 vaccination drive in India.

New Delhi: Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey informed the Lok Sabha that to register to the Co-WIN App people will not have to use their Aadhaar Card. The Co-WIN portal, which has been created along with the CoWin mobile app to help agencies track the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines as well as enable citizens of the country to register for the vaccination process. It has been developed by the Ministry of Health, government of India with the support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), India Office.

According to a PTI report, when Choubey was asked whether Aadhaar is mandatory for registering on the Co-WIN application, in a written reply, he said: "No, Aadhaar is not mandatory for registration on Co-WIN portal." He added that ₹ 58.90 lakh has been incurred on Co-WIN, as on February 1 this year.

When asked if any privacy assessments conducted, the PTI quoted Choubey as saying, "Yes, privacy impact assessments were carried out for Co-WIN portal. For data safety, data is encrypted using a highly secure key, no unauthorised access to database on AWS server is allowed and restricted access to relational database service (to decrease the risk of malicious activities)." He also further explained that, Co-WIN application follows the privacy policy as stated in the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM). 

The application helps in tracking and registration for the Covid-19 vaccine and has five modules namely, administrator module, registration module, vaccination module, beneficiary acknowledgment module, and report module. "It will upload bulk data on co-morbidity provided by local authorities or by surveyors," the government said earlier.
Apart from tracking vaccination, the mobile app also sends real-time data of the temperature of the cold-storage facilities to the main server. This is mainly an expansion of the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN) system that was launched in September 2020.