The plan harbored by India to offer unique identity cards (UID) to all citizens of the country would bring banking to the doors of the poor who presently do not even possess a bank account, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said in a report.

Microfinance facilities have been beyond the reach of poor people residing in both towns and villages because of the lack of any kind of proof of their identity.

Once UID is issued then it would offer a tamper proof authentic identity proof to all citizens using which the underpriviledged can open bank accounts and keep their money safe and at the same time grow it.

"As a result, banks will be able to scale up their branch-less banking deployments and reach out to a wider population at a lower cost," the report said.

"The assumption is that there is a sufficient number of people who want to open bank accounts but can't right now, which I think is a fair assumption," said Partha Mukhopadhyay, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. "A lot of very poor people still have savings, so they might want to open an account... If you have a UID, a bank can check that UID and verify that you are who you (claim you) are and can go ahead and open that account for you," he said.

Mukhopadhyay said that UID will "be able to increase banking reach in that sense. And it will hopefully eliminate difficulty that certain classes of people have in opening bank accounts."

This will in a way add to financial inclusion which is the need of the hour for the country.

The project by UIDAI aims at providing UID to atleast 600 million Indian citizens based on their location and biometrics starting from February 2011. The effort is under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, co founder of Infosys Technologies Ltd.