Aadhaar is not mandatory for registration on Co-Win Portal, the union minister of state for health Ashwini Choubey informed the Lok Sabha on February 8.

Providing details about the Co-WIN portal Choubey said it has been developed by the union health ministry with the support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), India.

It may be mentioned here that the Co-WIN portal has been created along with the CoWin mobile app to streamline the COVID-19 vaccination drive in India,

"No, Aadhaar is not mandatory for registration on Co-WIN portal. A total of Rs 58.90 lakhs have been incurred on Co-WIN, as on February 1 this year," Choubey said in a written reply.

On being asked about the privacy impact assessments, Choubey said, "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 the database on AWS server is allowed and restricted access to relational database service (to decrease the risk of malicious activities)," he added.

It may be mentioned here that the Co-WIN application follows the privacy policy as stated in the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM).