In the face of this limitation, Aadhaar continues to expand. The UID is now mandatory for over 300 schemes (a 2021 list puts it at 312), many of which provide essential resources like clean drinking water, and multiple non-scheme rights and obligations, like receiving one’s income tax refund. 

We continue to oppose and critique the use of Aadhaar for welfare and social security, and mourn those who died this year after being coercively deprived of their basic rights.

We remember  

Risa Mankadia, who died of hunger on October 22, belonged to a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in Odisha and was unable to access his PDS rations because he could not complete E-KYC (Know Your Customer) for his ration card in June despite trying repeatedly.

What happened this year

In the last year, we saw both privacy and democracy suffer with the enforcement of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, in November 2025. The Act fails to provide adequate safeguards to citizens against the government aggregating and monetising our data and carrying out expansive surveillance, or from Big Tech profiting from it and subjecting individuals to predatory targeting. It also guts the Right to Information, a hard-won tool for transparency and accountability in government.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 has been repealed and replaced with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025. Among the ways in which the 2025 Act hurts rural workers’ livelihoods and dignity is the imposition of a “biometric attendance system” – despite the fact that as recently as July 2025, the Ministry of Rural Development found serious flaws in an attempted digital attendance system and ordered Gram Panchayats to conduct “100%” physical attendance. 

Earlier this year the LSE Identity project celebrated 20 years of its existence and critique of the 2004 UK biometric identity project that was rolled back in the wake of strong public disapproval. But in October 2025, two decades after the UK’s proposed digital ID, the UK Prime Minister praised Aadhaar, calling it a massive success. Calling on other countries to Beware of Aadhaar, Rethink Aadhaar, along with several other organisations including the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR), NREGA Sansharsh Morcha, National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD), and Internet Freedom Foundation launched the Beware of Aadhaar Campaign as a warning to the global community on Aadhaar as a failed and objectionable model that should not be replicated in other countries. Please read and share it widely, here.

What the future may bring? 

On Christmas Day, The Hindu reported that the NATGRID has been linked to the NPR (National Population Register). NATGRID is a platform set up under the Congress government in 2010, linking government and private databases that can be accessed by the police and investigating agencies. As of the end of this year, NATGRID’s upgraded tools include facial recognition technology and the Ministry of Home Affairs “has asked the States to liberally use the platform to access datasets which includes details of driving licence, vehicle registration, Aadhaar, airline data, bank records, FASTAG, passport and travel details of foreigners and Indians, suspicious transaction reports from Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), railway passengers, and also extract and analyse data from social media posts.” 

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, begun in Bihar, will continue across the country despite the documented disenfranchisement of voters en masse – illustrating the perils of hasty digitisation with Booth Level Officers required to rely on new digital systems with little training and citizens bearing the consequences of inevitable errors. In just one state, 3.1 million voters have been left out of the first phase of the process because of “glitches” in converting a PDF file to CSV; countless others may find themselves vote-less as the State deepens its dependence on technology in core electoral functions, a trend that now extends beyond enrolment to the act of voting itself through the introduction of mobile-based voting in Bihar’s panchayat elections.

The upcoming digital census in 2027 must be read in the same continuum of institutional stress-testing. Though still to be carried out by enumerators, it places technology and databases at the centre of how people are recorded, carrying forward familiar risks of exclusion, opacity, and administrative overreach.

Is the surveillance state coming or is it already here? What kinds of challenges can we bring to these systems of mass surveillance in the new year? And will we even be left standing after these exercises in exclusion? We demand accountability and #DatabaseSeAazaadi!

2025: A year of resisting coercive technologies

We began the year with a caution against the APAAR ID and its impact on school-going children. For your ease - access explainers, resources on related concerns, and relevant RTI responses on this here. APAAR is now mandatory for CBSE board exams, and despite accounts of increasing exclusions, it continues to spread further. Maharashtra has announced APAAR will be required for all state board examinations as well. 

January 2025 saw the release of draft rules to operationalise the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. The rules fail to introduce any reasonable limitations on government use of people’s personal information, allowing the government to intrude on people’s personal information without limit. Along with other civil society organisations, Rethink convened a public reading of the rules, and was involved in drafting a letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology critiquing the manner in which the Rules had been drafted and released. The letter was endorsed by 13 organizations, and over 140 individuals, and submitted to the Ministry. We also prepared a joint submission on the rules with the Article 21 Trust.  

In April 2025, the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) proposed linking Aadhaar cards with the EPIC database. We wrote about how legally unsound and dangerous this was, and highlighted its potential impact on India’s electoral integrity. The statement was endorsed by over 150 individuals and circulated in the media.  

In 2025 we saw more tinkering with electoral integrity with the Special Intensive Revision exercises, which began in Bihar in July. We authored a statement titled “Bihar as the Laboratory of Electoral Mismanagement,” calling for the ECI to immediately suspend the SIR. Of course, not only did that not happen, but the SIR has been extended nationally to 12 more states and union territories, with West Bengal in current focus. A follow-up statement on the issue after the SC’s interim order on Bihar, is here. 

To think together about these growing concerns on citizenship, identity, and documents, and to understand how to witness the events then ongoing in Bihar, we organised a webinar titled “India’s Identity Crisis: Bihar's Special Intensive Revision, Aadhaar and Citizenship”, with scholar Dr Usha Ramanathan, activist Kamayani Swami and editor Santosh Singh in Bihar, advocate Prasanna S, and professor Jean Dreze. The recording of the full webinar is here. 

In June, we focused on the expanding, coercive Aadhaar net, despite recorded exclusions and fraud. In July, our newsletter focussed on voting rights, and rounded up other relevant updates and interesting readings on the issue. In August, we hoped to bring public attention to Aadhaar-enabled grave human rights violations, and included reports and analysis on other technology and digitisation related concerns. Simultaneously, other rights violations continued, affecting privacy and data security, expanding facial recognition, monetising data, and exports of this technology in India’s neighbourhood, most recently in the military junta-ruled Myanmar. 

In September, Professor Jagdeep Chhokar, founder of Association of Democratic Reforms passed away. Prof. Chhokar, among India’s most steadfast advocates for electoral transparency, was among the pioneering thinkers who opposed the linking of Aadhaar to voter ID as ill-thought, illogical and unnecessary in 2021 and campaigned for wide social and political inclusion till the end. We remember him with the deepest respect. 

Till the last weeks of 2025, resistance to forced digitisation and coercion continued – in the form of litigation by anganwadi workers in the Bombay High Court, by government teachers in Maharashtra and a powerful strike by over 2 lakh gig workers. More strength and solidarity to them!

As we enter the new year, and look back on the old, we gather our strength to continue resistance, spread awareness and create and collect resources. We can only do this work with the support of readers and people like you. Please continue to share relevant readings and reports with us, and share our newsletters, resources with others. No2UID and happy new year <3!

--

Rethink Aadhaar Campaign

For signing up for Rethink Aadhaar mailing list, please click: 

https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/rethink-aadhaar 

Twitter: @No2UID
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/no2uid/

Write to us at: contact@rethinkaadhaar.in

Note to readers: We are able to compile these updates because readers send us relevant information. If you think something is worth sharing widely, please send it to us and we will try to include it in the updates. Email: contact@rethinkaadhaar.in @no2UID

Coercive digitisation violates fundamental rights: 

• Harsh digital coercion in Aadhaar-linked systems has caused yet another starvation death in India’s interior villages.
  Risa Mankadia, a single elderly man who belonged to a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group in Odisha was unable to get his rice rations after he was not able to complete E-KYC(Know Your Customer) for his Antodaya – meant for the poorest of the poor families – ration card in June despite trying repeatedly.
  He died of hunger on October 22, noted the Right to Food Campaign. Earlier, activists have investigated more than 20 deaths where those with fragile livelihoods and who faced chronic hunger have starved after officials cut off their food and welfare rights for not enrolling in Aadhaar or failing to link their details online to Aadhaar.
  
  Rethink Aadhaar demands an investigation into Mankadia’s death and accountability from the union government and Odisha officials and companies running Aadhaar systems for the denial of vital social security in  Mankadia’s final months.

• The union government has tried to market and export Aadhaar biometric ID to other countries such as Sri Lanka. More recently, the UK government advertised its own digital ID card with claims that the switch to Aadhar saved India’s government over $10bn each year, a dubious claim that has never been proven. In the backdrop of Mankadia’s death was the fact that the Odisha government and the Union government were denying 15.66 lakh families their right to food merely because they have been unable to do the re-KYC process. These families will stop getting subsidised food and bear the burden of proving their KYC and the government capitalises on denials showing these as “savings”.

• Digital ID for children is creating new roadblocks to the right to education: The APAAR ID’s restrictive and centralised requirements are excluding children from schools, potentially resulting in not recognising their credentials and ineligibility for crucial examinations. A “single misplaced letter, a placeholder birthday, or a typo made years ago by an overworked teacher can derail a child's education.” APAAR was rolled out as a diktat to schools, without any consultation, following the Aadhaar playbook. 

For more on APAAR, see the following videos: 

PART 1| APAAR ID अपार आईडी स्वैच्छिक होने पर भी क्यों हो रही है ज़बरदस्ती? Is APAAR ID safe? – https://youtu.be/4ntjK0rOWwk 

PART 2 | APAAR ID की ज़बरदस्ती? क्या है आपके अधिकार! APAAR ID being forced? Know your Rights! – https://youtu.be/-2q5k4hLPkg 

Our January update contains links to resources, explainers, important RTIs on APAAR ID

• The Meghalaya government is insisting on Aadhaar production by applicants for an SC/ST scholarship but the Meghalaya High Court has held, as an interim measure, that applicants cannot be disqualified for non-production of Aadhaar. Meanwhile, the Meghalaya government has acknowledged that QR codes can be tampered with in its push to use a specific application to scan and verify Aadhaar QR codes. 

• The vulnerabilities of a digital vaccine certification system – COWIN – have been exposed as the COWIN portal was inaccessible for multiple weeks in August and September, affecting people’s right to travel and access their own health records. 

• People with loans may soon be locked out of their mobile phone — a lifeline for people in India today — at the whims of lenders in case of default. The extreme consequences of permitting a lender to control a person’s access to their phone in “Digital India” cannot be overstated – consumer activists warn that “This practice weaponizes access to essential technology to enforce behavioural compliance, locking users out of livelihoods, education, and financial services until repayment.”

• Aadhaar is a hurdle even for switching to environment-friendly solar power in UP: “mismatches between the names in the electricity department records and the Aadhaar cards” cause problems for people simply trying to get loans for their solar power equipment under central schemes.

Digitisation is causing rampant risks to privacy and information security: 

• Activist Srinivas Kodali’s complaint to the Chief Electoral Officer, Telangana alleging misuse of personal data has revealed serious abuse of personal information by the state government. 

• The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Telangana has admitted that the personal information of voters in the state from the ECI database was shared with the state government, allegedly to link voter IDs with Aadhaar, and the data was used for different purposes after that without the ECI’s permission – including creation of a facial recognition system – a flawed form of algorithmic identity verification. This comes after the CEO initially denied the allegations.

• Access to the data was not limited by the State government – it was shared with a private company to create a pensioner verification system. 

The incident highlights the impossibility of preventing misuse of data once aggregated by any government body, and serves as a reminder that India still does not have a functioning data protection law which could potentially hold the government – as a data fiduciary – responsible for unauthorised and unlawful use and dissemination of personal data. 

• In the absence of any limitation on use of data by governments, Maharashtra and Rajasthan are planning to monetise the personal information of welfare scheme beneficiaries — including name, age, gender, religion, caste, income range, assets and education, and links to vehicle ownership, tax status, and health records. This information may be made available to private companies for their “market research” — a blatantly unlawful use of personal data collected for a completely different purpose, without any consent from the individuals or any perceptible public interest. 

• Companies which develop facial recognition technologies for the state to surveil people are often the same companies involved in facial recognition for other uses – for example, mobile voting in local elections, raising more questions about governments misusing personal data. 

Meanwhile, Aadhaar use and digitisation expands: 

• The 2027 Census exercise will likely bring new challenges and risks for privacy and inclusion: 

• The multiple technological measures proposed for information collection raise issues of “privacy, data protection, and the potential for state-led surveillance” and “India’s vulnerability to cyberattacks amplifies these risks, threatening both the integrity of the census process and the security of citizens’ data.” 

• Census enumerators and supervisors will use their own mobile phones to collect people’s intimate personal information in 2027 — with no regard for the security and integrity of the information or how the supervisors may use it. 

• The UIDAI plans to permit facial authentication through Aadhaar for online transfers of high amounts – without any evaluation of whether this will affect the real problem of scammers and digital fraud when the person’s face is authenticated, or how many people will need to update their biometrics to be able to transfer their own money. 

• Aadhaar in an armistice agreement: The MHA and Manipur Government will require Kuki-Zo insurgent groups to obtain Aadhaar cards and link them to their bank accounts in order to access the stipend they are entitled to under a 2008 pact. 

• After the Supreme Court directed the ECI to accept Aadhaar as proof of identity during the Special Intensive Revision, the ECI will also accept Aadhaar as proof of identity for voters who are on the electoral roll but do not have a physical voter ID card.  

• Simultaneously, the ECI is deploying new “tech-enabled” voter ID cards just weeks two months ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, which have already served as an experiment ground for the Special Intensive Revision. These will require fresh applications and downloads to registered mobile numbers risking further exclusion from the electoral process.

• Despite evidence of fake or misused Aadhaar by ticket-booking bots on IRCTC through Tatkal, the platform has made it mandatory to use Aadhaar to book even reserved general tickets during the first 15 minutes of the opening of general reservation.

• Labour skills will be digitised in a “real-time” labour market information system which is in the works and will reportedly use “AI” and machine learning to work — but it is unclear which sources data will be collected from, or which issues the specific use of AI and ML is aimed at resolving. 

• The UIDAI CEO insists that Aadhaar is not “functional” but a foundational ID and fraud is not a problem — while fake Aadhaars are the reason for repeated verification and for non-acceptance as proof of anything. 

Aadhaar and digitisation continue to make money for others: 

• 26% of Jan Dhan accounts in public sector banks are inoperative — raising concerns about the real value of these accounts for the general public, and whether the banks are doing anything to improve accessibility for their customers once on-boarded and recorded as a win for “Digital India”. 

• The private company Protean eGov Technologies saw its shares surge 11% after UIDAI awarded it a work order worth ₹1,160 crore to run district-level Aadhaar Seva Kendras (ASKs). Experts and scholars like Reetika Khera have documented how dysfunctional and dystopian ASKs can be, causing bureaucratic nightmares for people dealing with demographic or biometric errors and updations. 

• Online real-money gaming has succeeded, making private companies rich, due to the “spread of UPI, cheap smartphones, cheaper data” and in the process, have led to addiction and huge financial losses for Indians. “Behind flashy apps and jackpots lies a complex web of mule accounts, payouts and payment tricks that move thousands of crores beyond the screen.” 

Related reading: 

What does “digital sovereignty” mean: Do Indian companies pursue the goals of Indians, or their government? 

Aadhaar for the UK? Not quite: Although the UK announced plans for a biometric digital identity system in the UK “Brit Card” to serve as a work permit, this is neither a wholesale approval of Aadhaar, nor a certainty. More than 1.6 million people have opposed the plan, describing it as “a step towards mass surveillance and digital control” which would put “incredibly sensitive information” at risk. Indians are sharing lessons from Aadhaar to warn against any mandatory biometric ID, highlighting the human rights violations caused by social and economic exclusion and the lack of privacy and oversight.

Reportage in Jacobin on India’s “Citizenship by algorithm”: How Aadhaar is being used to “undertake a biometric, religious, and genealogical project of redefining citizenship”. 

State surveillance in Pakistan: An Amnesty Tech report warns that “Pakistan is developing one of the world's most comprehensive surveillance programmes outside China.” The framework includes a phone-tapping system that can surveil at least 4 million phones at any given time, and an internet firewall that can block two million active internet sessions at once. Amnesty has documented the involvement of a nexus of companies based in Germany, France, United Arab Emirates (UAE), China, Canada, and the United States. 

The internet as a forum for democratic movements in Nepal and Bangladesh, and lessons for regulation in India: The use of platforms like Discord in the recent uprising in Nepal highlight the internet's evolving role in democracy — it can be used for effective and safe communication and mobilisation but can also serve as a carrier of misinformation or propaganda. India should avoid digital authoritarianism, recognizing its incompatibility with democratic and economic goals.

The labour behind the technology: “Thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart”.

Dear friends, 

2025 begins, and with it, we see an increasing tendency on the part of the state to introduce Aadhaar-coded technology across domains, from education to agriculture, land, and more. We believe it is important for the Rethink community to extend our concerns beyond Aadhaar, to rethinking digital as a whole. So, while we aim to continue the fight against Aadhaar and allied technologies, we also hope to address other tech initiatives. 

In this, the first newsletter of 2025, we focus on the APAAR ID - a ‘voluntary’ ID launched by the Ministry of Education (MoE) to create a database of all students in India, part of the ‘One Nation, One Student ID’ programme. Amidst alarming reports on the decline of school enrollment rates, the introduction and push for APAAR raises concerns about access and exclusions, along with the usual concerns about data safety. Launched in October 2023, APAAR is part of the National Education Policy 2020, and provides a singular lifelong ID for students to store all academic records, credits, and certificates. The ID is also mandatorily linked with the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) and with DigiLocker. 

The APAAR ID raises many concerns - it has no legal or statutory backing, and has no guidelines, framework for implementation, or other policy documents that clearly lay out the procedures to be followed. The consent form is ambiguously worded, the data safety measures are vague, and the benefits are unclear. The APAAR rollout process is one we have seen many times before with respect to identification systems, where it is supposed to be voluntary, but reports from across the country reveal the manner in which officials, parents, students, and teachers are facing immense pressure to ensure full coverage.

Remember the APAAR ID is not mandatory - we can and must resist. We also share resources at the end of this email that parents/guardians can use for taking action.

We are sharing some relevant links, explainers, and coverage below.

This explainer by the Internet Freedom Foundation unpacks the ID in detail, and analyses concerns relating to data protection, privacy, and consent. 

On the APAAR ID

• FAQs on APAAR by the Ministry of Education. The MoE has also provided resources, including brochures explaining the ID, explaining the application process flow for parents and for schools, and a brochure clearly stating the ID is voluntary, that it cannot be made without an Aadhaar for the guardian and student, and the data security protocols (unclear and contradictory!)

• APAAR ID explainer in The Indian Express.

On its voluntariness

• The MoE’s brochure and the APAAR ID website clearly state that the ID is voluntary. Schools must ask parents to fill out hardcopy consent forms which schools are required to store, along with a digital copy that will be generated and stored in the UDISE+ portal. 

• The parental consent form can be found on this page - and it raises red flags. The form states that parental consent can be withdrawn at any time, but it also states “...any personal data already been processed shall remain unaffected on such withdrawal of consent.” Considering that the APAAR ID is linked with the Aadhaar of the guardian and the child, and shares data with multiple other databases including UDISE+, DigiLocker, the Academic Bank of Credits,  and the Vidya Samiksha Kendra, this provision in the consent form is a cause for concern. 

• News reports show a very different and familiar story - voluntariness exists on paper, while bureaucrats, school administrators, teachers, and parents face enrollment deadlines, increasing pressure, and even threats of pay cuts for teachers. [Odisha; Mumbai; Ahmedabad; Andhra Pradesh; Punjab; Ludhiana]

On access 

• While the MoE has emphasised that the APAAR ID is voluntary, and does not preclude access to any government programmes, scholarships, internships, or any other schemes, parent groups have expressed concern that refusing consent could mean their child will lose out on advantages. 

• Aadhaar of the student and one guardian is mandatory for generating an APAAR ID. First, this makes APAAR inaccessible for all students who do not have an Aadhaar card; second, this violates the spirit of the SC judgement stating that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for access to any scheme or benefit. 

• The APAAR ID application is only processed and approved after Aadhaar authentication is conducted. This is causing widespread fear and confusion, because in multiple cases student names are spelt differently in their Aadhaar and their birth certificates, and other such demographic details mismatches are also common. 

• Making IDs legally voluntary, but for all purposes making access to entitlements and benefits contingent on the ID, and thereby making it mandatory in practice was seen widely in the case of Aadhaar; when access to PDS entitlements, MGNREGA work, BPL pensions, farmer schemes, and innumerable other initiatives was predicated on the possession of an Aadhaar card.

On data security

• In the context of previous student data leaks, concerns about data privacy are prevalent amongst parents/guardians. 

• The statement by IFF and this blog by SFLC.in lay out the data concerns more thoroughly.

Action points

This RTI reply by the MoE states clearly that APAAR ID is not mandatory.  We also share two template letters (here and this one drafted by IFF) that guardians can use to write to schools about their concerns and refusal to consent to the creation of APAAR for their wards. The APAAR ID is still in the stage of its rollout, and we urge all of you to share these resources with your friends/family who have children facing pressure to enroll in APAAR from their educational institutions. 

Please also write to us with your experience of the ID enrollment process, and your experience in refusing it. Sharing our stories and resources with each other strengthens our collective fight. 

Privacy and Surveillance

The Different Ways in Which Aadhaar Infringes on Privacy

https://thewire.in/government/privacy-aadhaar-supreme-court-

CIS Report, Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof): A documentation of public availability of Aadhaar Numbers with sensitive personal financial information https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/information-security-practices-of-aadhaar-or-lack-thereof-a-documentation-of-public-availability-of-aadhaar-numbers-with-sensitive-personal-financial-information-1

Aadhaar’s Function Creep visible in digital ID for education: “APAAR” ID’s most disturbing feature is not its invasive data collection, but the clandestine manner of its implementationhttps://www.deccanherald.com/specials/digital-database-or-coercive-report-card-apaar-id-3469158

and ‘The Impossible Maze Of India’s New Student Identity Project—APAAR’ https://www.boomlive.in/decode/apaar-id-india-digital-education-aadhaar-crisis-29721

Security AND Data Breaches

‘Here are the major security breaches of Aadhaar and what was actually affected’

https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/aadhaar-security-breaches-here-are-the-major-untoward-incidents-that-have-happened-with-aadhaar-and-what-was-actually-affected-4300349.html

‘Indian state government leaks thousands of Aadhaar Numbers’ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/aadhaar-data-leak/

‘UIDAI restricts Aadhaar portal access to 5,000 designated officials after alleged breach’

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/uidai-firewalls-5000-officials-post-breach/articleshow/62423133.cms

‘Cops In India Are Using Artificial Intelligence That Can Identify You In a Crowd’, reports HuffPost India

https://www.huffpost.com/archive/in/entry/facial-recognition-ai-is-shaking-up-criminals-in-punjab-but-should-you-worry-too_in_5c107639e4b0a9576b52833b

Errors, hassles, social exclusion of those already vulnerable

‘Without Aadhaar, without identity’. Vyom Anil, Jean Dreze write in The Indian Express: People who lose their Aadhaar number may not be able to retrieve it, and risk losing all social benefits https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/flaw-in-aadhaar-architecture-uidai-card-enrolment-7389133/

A detailed investigation into the working of an Aadhaar Seva Kendra in Ranchiillustrates the bureaucratic ordeals imposed on people trying to update or enrol in Aadhaar

“My face changes with each surgery. How many times will I update my Aadhaar?” Indian acid attack survivors take their fight against exclusionary digital ID norms to Supreme Court https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9VF3Qr4oAg

‘Starvation Deaths and Denial of Welfare Entitlements – Insights from Jharkhand’. An investigation by Siraj Dutta into more than 27 deaths caused by starvation in the five years after Aadhaar was made compulsory shows how it worsened chronic hunger when the poorest communities could not access digital technologies that had been mandatory https://www.scribd.com/document/836730293/SSRN-id3870242 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3870242

‘Tribal communities across Maharashtra face barriers to accessing education, health care, and government schemes because they could not register in Aadhaar’ https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/maharashtra/an-anonymous-life-without-an-aadhar-identity/article69939921.ece

A study by scholars at LibTech, how Aadhaar-centered digital systems requiring constant updates threaten people’s access to food under the public distribution system https://idronline.org/article/rights/infrastructures-of-exclusion-how-e-kyc-impacts-access-to-food/

“Savings” false claims of Aadhaar apparatus

Aadhaar’s $11bn Question: No basis for government statement on Aadhaar “savings” 
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/aadhaars-11-bn-question-the-numbers-being-touted-by-govt-have-no-solid-basis/articleshow/62830705.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

More than 8 million drop in number of marginalised scholarship beneficiaries’ list linked to Aadhaar being forced, and tech glitches, delays https://news.careers360.com/89-lakh-drop-sc-st-obc-scholarship-students-aadhaar-card-link-pre-post-matric-pms-yasasvi-shreshta-nsp-ssp-portal-delays-nep

In a bid to build digital “golden data” records on every citizen, the most vulnerable were struck off social security registers, declared “dead” or absent https://thewire.in/rights/companies-gain-elders-lose-in-rajasthans-turn-to-cradle-to-grave-digital-governance

Opinion: Data is the new gold and Aadhaar is the tool to get it (Usha Ramanathan, 30 December 2016)

The mother of all disruptions (Jean Dreze, December 2016)

Resisting violations of the Supreme Court Orders on Aadhaar (Anupam Saraph, 12 December 2016)

Sharing Aadhaar data: HC notice to Centre, Reliance (Special Correspondent, The Hindu, 14 December 2016)

Aadhaar Regulations grant UIDAI unchecked power, and offer little convenience to users (Prashant Reddy Thikkavarapu, November 2016)

India's Aadhaar project: An assault on welfare, privacy, and democracy (Reetika Khera, Praavita, Aashish Gupta, November 2016)

Dark clouds over the PDS (Jean Dreze, September 2016)

On Aadhaar Success, it's all hype, that includes the World Bank (Reetika Khera, September 2016)

Can biometrics stop the theft of food rations? No, shows Gujarat (Anumeha Yadav, 17 December 2016)

Note to readers: We are able to compile these updates because readers send us relevant information. If you think something is worth sharing widely, please send it to us and we will try to include it in the updates. Email: contact@rethinkaadhaar.in | Twitter: @no2UID 

Voting rights and Aadhaar come closer together:

• Read an interview with Dr. Usha Ramanathan on the privacy impact of linking Aadhaar with voter IDs. 

• The Bihar SIR exercise has led to millions being struck off the voter list in a hasty, unlawful exercise. The Supreme Court directed the ECI to accept Aadhaar in claims against de-listing. 

• The SIR exercise has shown that there are likely no non-citizens on the voter list in Bihar, but the fears stoked have led to announcements of a nation-wide SIR.

• In Manipur, informal proceedings to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) along the lines of Bihar have begun, with people being told to produce Aadhaar. 

Aadhaar continues to be arbitrarily inaccessible and unworkable: 

• A detailed investigation into the working of an Aadhaar Seva Kendra in Ranchi illustrates the bureaucratic ordeals imposed on people trying to update or enrol in Aadhaar. 

• Assam’s government announced it will stop issuing Aadhaar numbers to adults to prevent non-Indian citizens from obtaining them, despite the fact that Aadhaar can be legally provided to non-citizens, and this move will likely disenfranchise people seeking access to benefits. 

• The endless cycle of KYC continues as DBT beneficiaries are set to be audited again. 

• Aadhaar is the new “weak link” in insurance processes, allowing an opening for identity-based fraud through insurance claims. 

Digitisation fails to serve the people’s interests, but continues to expand:

• A look at the impact of corporate-driven tech initiatives in agriculture. 

• Mandating Aadhaar linkage, digital data entry, and unreliable tech has led to exclusion of 89 lakh potential scholarship beneficiaries from the most vulnerable groups including SC, ST, and OBC beneficiaries. 

• Unique IDs and digitisation do nothing to stop corruption or false claims: thousands of fake teacher IDs were created in Maharashtra in a Rs.3000 crore scam. 

• The Rajasthan Government’s attempt to build digital “golden data” records on every citizen has led to the most vulnerable being denied pensions, wrongly declared “dead” or absent. 

• In Maharashtra, tribal children are turned away from school because of lack of Aadhaar. 

• The UP government plans to introduce AI tools in MGNREGA operations without consideration for the impact on beneficiaries. 

• The Delhi government is expanding mandatory ID requirements for public schemes, to exclusionary effect. The pink ticket free bus scheme for women is being replaced with a “smart card” which requires Delhi residency, excluding vulnerable women who work in the NCR or have other difficulty getting address proof. Simultaneously, Aadhaar enrolment is set to get more onerous in Delhi. 

• Odisha’s mass ration card deletion is yet to be revoked despite clear problems in the KYC process and people’s reliance on ration to correct the high burden of malnutrition.

• More than 23% of Jan Dhan bank accounts are inactive, reflecting the lack of actual access and ease of digitisation and banking. 

• Telangana plans digitisation of health systems in partnership with Estonia.

Aadhaar, data, and surveillance: 

• The MHA wants prison authorities to conduct Aadhaar authentication for persons imprisoned and their visitors, a move that has no link to welfare benefits, and could only serve to further surveillance of imprisoned people and affect their legal defences and the privacy and dignity of their families. Family members without Aadhaar are being turned away in a violation of human rights. 

• In Mizoram, refugees are being forced to give up biometric data, making them even more vulnerable to targeting persecution. 

• Parents and experts urge the Karnataka Government to not introduce facial recognition systems for school attendance, warning of misuse. 

Watch Justice (Retd.) Gautam Patel’s address at the Internet Freedom Foundation’s Privacy Supreme event on the anniversary of the Puttaswamy judgment. Justice Patel traces the evolution of privacy in India, reflecting on its past foundations, present challenges, and the future trajectory of this essential right in an era of rapid technological change. 

Interesting related readings: 

• A concise reminder of how Aadhaar came to be and its failures.

• The India-UK FTA and the impact on India’s digital sovereignty.

• How India’s new wave of tech billionaires are changing CSR and philanthropy.

Until next time!

In solidarity,

Rethink Aadhaar.

• This is a mammoth exercise akin to the creation of a National Register of Citizens, being attempted with limited manpower and time. 

• The process is beyond the ECI’s remit and is likely to exclude genuine voters, especially those enrolled since 2003, since it requires production of documents like proof of parents’ date or place of birth required for proving citizenship.

• Over 61 lakh voters may be excluded from the list. 

• A ground report by Kamayani Singh, Rahul Shastri, and Yogendra Yadav exposes the gaps between the ECI’s claims of supporting voters, and the ground reality of people forced to chase BLOs and produce multiple documents. 

• This exercise may be used to force Aadhaar linkage with electoral records, while raising doubts about the validity of Aadhaar as identification.

   

To understand the concerns over exclusion, legality, and surveillance surrounding the SIR, join the Rethink Aadhaar webinar with on India’s Identity Crisis: Bihar's Special Intensive Revision, Aadhaar and Citizenship on Sunday, 27 July, 2025 at 8:00 PM IST.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMCZrMuyexU/

Other updates

Reiterating limitations on Aadhaar use: the Bombay High Court issues a reminder that after the Supreme Court’s judgement in Puttaswamy (2018), banks cannot insist on Aadhaar for opening accounts. The HC awarded compensation of Rs. 50,000/- for losses incurred due to the bank’s refusal to open an account. 

However Aadhaar continues to be misapplied: forcing Aadhaar verification for tatkal bookings on IRCTC has not stopped agents from buying up tickets through bots using for-sale Aadhaar-verified login credentials. Genuine users risk losing access to their accounts, especially given IRCTC’s previous data breaches. 

Aadhaar use also continues to expand, now in employment: the Finance Ministry has allowed “voluntary” Aadhaar authentication to verify candidates for public sector banking jobs. 

Getting, keeping, and “verifying” Aadhaar becomes more difficult: 

• The Manipur government is adopting a stringent verification process to enroll and update Aadhaar, including mandatory biometric updates at ages 5-7 and after 15, and headquarter approval for “adult Aadhaar” cases.

• The Assam government has proposed requiring District Commissioners’ approval for adult Aadhaar applications. 

• The Odisha government plans to suspend 20.58 lakh ration cards for lack of e-KYC verification, forcing people to come to PDS stores or face deactivation of their ration cards. Previously, 19 lakh people were denied the right to food when the Odisha PDS mandated linking Aadhaar with ration cards. 

• Jan Dhan bank accounts, which were supposed to enable DBTs, are at risk of closure in an ongoing re-KYC exercise. (needs verification as the link is paywalled; the Govt insists there will be no closure of inactive accounts)

• De-activating an individual’s Aadhar after their death is slow: only 1.15 crore Aadhaar numbers have been de-activated, leading to inflated numbers which spark rumours of Aadhaar fraud or duplication.  

Digitisation drawbacks: The push for UPI adoption is leading to GST notices for small vendors in Karnataka, with plans to expand nationally.

Criminal justice and surveillance: A special two-part investigation into the use of facial recognition technology by the Delhi Police exposes how marginalised communities suffer the consequences of FRT’s failures, and how the Delhi Police ignored bias, abuse, data leaks, and human rights violations in sourcing this tech. 

Tech and state power: 

• How technology companies are furthering colonial oppression through “colonial algorithms”, with AI-targeting software, surveillance mechanisms, and censorship tools to enable violence against Palestinians, and maintain repressive power structures. 

• An exploration of how the Indian state is expanding its powers and undermining democracy as the relationship between the governed and the governors is increasingly controlled through digital technologies. 

From around the world: the Aadhaar experience serves as a cautionary tale for the Sri Lankan digitisation project. 

Rethink Aadhaar notes the interim order of the Supreme Court of India on 10 July 2025 in the challenge(s) to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar announced by the Election Commission of India on 24.06.2025. 

Some Petitioners pressed for Aadhaar to be accepted as a valid proof of identity for the purpose of enrollment into the electoral rolls despite its role in elections being the subject of a pending constitutional challenge in S.G. Vombatkere v. Union of India (W.P. (Civil) 848/2022). This approach relied on Section 23(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which permits Electoral Registration Officers to mandate Aadhaar for identity verification. 

Although biometric authentication is not being used in the current SIR, accepting Aadhaar as a supporting document creates the administrative and technical foundation for linking electoral rolls with the Aadhaar database in the future, including its use for biometric voter verification, as was experimented coincidentally in the recently conducted Municipal Elections in Bihar. 

Aadhaar’s widespread coverage has been driven by coercive, mandatory enrolment and forced use with little to no accountability across welfare and service systems. This creeping expansion has triggered mass deletions across multiple contexts, including in Assam where Aadhaar was weaponised through biometric freezes and NRC-linked exclusions, and in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh where electoral rolls saw large-scale deletions, and also raised grave concerns of surveillance, targeted voter profiling, and the erosion of the secret ballot. 

Rethink Aadhaar maintains that the electoral rolls must be completely de-linked with Aadhaar, an exclusionary, unreliable, leaking centralised database whose legal status remains unsettled. Further, that the guarantee of universal adult franchise flowing from Article 326 of the Indian Constitution must be based on a flexible, inclusive, and pluralistic approach to documentation, without privileging one form of identity. For more background, please see how Aadhaar-voter ID linking is an assault on free and fair elections.

Please write to contact@rethinkaadhaar.in  , laavanyatamang@gmail.com.

In spite of all the reports of hardship and exclusion as well as continuing fraud from the use of Aadhaar, the government keeps expanding its scope and making it mandatory for legal entitlements as well. We are sharing a round-up of recent developments. We urge you to share these updates with your networks as well.

Exclusions continue

Difficulties faced by victims of acid attacks in enrolling for Aadhaar – they had to go to Court to find a way, by John Simte | A video story on this from Scroll.in

Here’s another by him on the same issue, in The India Forum

Problems – and queues – to keep Aadhaar up to date and usable, by Aparna Kalra.

On Aadhaar and adivasis, by Chakradhar Buddha and BDS Kishore

…Its usefulness continues to be questioned:

Andy Mukherjee (Bloomberg columnist): https://x.com/andymukherjee70/status/1934939679125917703

…Fraud continues in spite of Aadhaar or even because of Aadhaar

Mastermind who cheated 26 crores, only 'alive' on Aadhar card, Dainik Bhaskar 

Using Aadhaar to defraud people of their PDS rations in UP, Daily Pioneer

Its role in helping candidates cheat in MP constable exam, Indian Express

Yet, the use of Aadhaar keeps expanding

Mandatory for tatkal bookings: https://x.com/AshwiniVaishnaw/status/1930292913579147360

“Facial recognition” mandatory for ‘take-home rations’ given to pregnant women at anganwadis.

Many reacted angrily (as they should): see Sucheta Dalal, Rathin Roy, Martin Haus, Neel Kolhe.  

In Jan 2024, Anganwadi workers in Andhra Pradesh were already raising issues related to over-use of apps. 

Book on facial recognition by Amber Sinha and old article on this by Gautam Bhatia

Related news, wider reading and from around the world

Biometrics of arrestees being collected in Rajasthan and Delhi, Vijaita Singh

https://www.medianama.com/2025/06/223-uidai-anonymised-aadhaar-data-risks/

Two perspectives on doorstep delivery of PDS grain –– a rollback in AP and one that never took off (perhaps just as well that it didn’t) in Delhi (from 2021)

Three stories on the growing worries about Palantir: The Daily Show, Rob Reich’s subtack, in The New York Times

संक्षेप में: आधार के उपयोग पर पाँच महत्वपूर्ण सीमाएँ जिन्हें बहुमत के फैसले ने मान्यता दी:

1. आधार को केवल कल्याणकारी योजनाओं के लिए अनिवार्य बनाया जा सकता है (पृष्ठ 389, पैरा 320 - 322 देखें)। यह विशेष रूप से अभिनिर्धारित किया गया था कि आधार को पेंशन जैसे अर्जित लाभों के लिए अनिवार्य नहीं बनाया जा सकता है। बहुमत के फैसले में यह भी कहा गया है, "साथ ही, हम आशा करते हैं कि उत्तरदाता 'सब्सिडी, सेवाओं और लाभों' के दायरे का अनुचित विस्तार नहीं करेंगे, जिससे आधार का दायरा बढ़ेगा, जहां इसकी अन्यथा अनुमति नहीं है।" (पृ. 391)

2. निजी कंपनियां आधार का इस्तेमाल नहीं कर सकतीं. आधार अधिनियम की धारा 57 जो निजी कंपनियों द्वारा आधार प्रमाणीकरण के उपयोग की अनुमति देती है, असंवैधानिक है (पैरा 219 (ई), 412, 447(1)(डी))।

3. आधार को बच्चों के स्कूल में प्रवेश या सर्व शिक्षा अभियान के तहत लाभ के लिए अनिवार्य नहीं बनाया जा सकता है। आधार की कमी के कारण बच्चों को लाभ से वंचित नहीं किया जा सकता है (पृष्ठ 393, पैरा 325; पृष्ठ 401, पैरा 332 देखें)।

4. आधार (प्रमाणीकरण) विनियम, 2016 के विनियम 26 के अन्तर्गत अधिप्रमाणन संव्यवहार डेटा का संचयन अस्वीकार्य माना गया था। (पैरा 219 (बी))

5. आधार (प्रमाणीकरण) संव्यवहार डेटा का प्रतिधारण  छह महीने की अवधि से अधिक नहीं रखा जाना चाहिए (पैरा 219 (ए))

फैसले द्वारा स्थापित सीमाओं की घोर उपेक्षा करते हुए, सरकार मौलिक अधिकारों की कीमत पर यूआईडी को बढ़ावा देने के लिए आधार के उपयोग का विस्तार जारी रखे हुए है।

मूडीज क्रेडिट रेटिंग एजेंसी ने आधार की आलोचना की

इस बीच, एक अनुस्मारक - बायोमेट्रिक्स अविश्वसनीय हैं। यह व्यापक रूप से बताया गया है कि क्रेडिट रेटिंग एजेंसी, मूडीज़ ने एक रिपोर्ट जारी की है जिसमें आधार के साथ चिंताओं को उजागर किया गया है, जिसमें कहा गया है कि "इस प्रणाली के परिणामस्वरूप अक्सर सेवा से इनकार हो जाता है, और मैनुअल मजदूरों के लियें बायोमेट्रिक प्रौद्योगिकियों की विश्वसनीयता, विशेष रूप से गर्म, आर्द्र जलवायु में कम हो जाती है। सरकार ने रिपोर्ट का खंडन किया है और किये गए दावों को “निराधार” बताया है।

दुनिया में सबसे भरोसेमंद आईडी

मूडीज को जवाब देते हुए मोदी सरकार ने अविश्वसनीय दावा किया है कि आधार दुनिया में सबसे भरोसेमंद डिजिटल आईडी है। वहीँ अपराधी, किसी भी खेल से हमेशा दो कदम आगे रहते हैं, इस सबसे भरोसेमंद आईडी के साथ धोखाधड़ी करने के नए तरीके खोजने में बेहद नवीन और आविष्कारशील रहे हैं। हमारी एक व्यक्तिगत पसंदीदा कहानी यूपी गैंग की थी जो आधार कार्ड बनाने के लिए पैर की उंगलियों के निशान (टो प्रिंट) का इस्तेमाल करता था, जिसका इस्तेमाल धोखाधड़ी से बैंक ऋण लेने वाले कई लोगों द्वारा किया जाता था।

डिकोड ने इस महीने रिपोर्ट दी थी - ''बिहार पुलिस आधार सक्षम भुगतान प्रणाली के माध्यम से धोखाधड़ी से थक गई है।” यह रिपोर्ट आधार सक्षम भुगतान प्रणाली (AePS) की व्याख्या करती है। आधार सक्षम भुगतान प्रणाली (AePS) के तहत लोगों को अपने खाते से पैसा निकालने के लिए अपने बॉयोमीट्रिक्स (उंगलियों के निशान) का उपयोग करना पड़ता है। लोगों को बैंक जाने या एटीएम कार्ड रखने की आवश्यकता नहीं है, वे बैंक द्वारा नियुक्त  बिजनेस कॉरेस्पोंडेंट (या CSP) के पास जा सकते हैं। वे बिजनेस कॉरेस्पोंडेंट को अपना आधार नंबर देते हैं, पीओएस (POS) मशीन पर अपना अंगूठा लगाते हैं। यदि उनके उंगलियों के निशान वेरीफाई हो जाते है, तो वे पैसे निकाल सकते हैं। रिपोर्ट में लिखा है कि - “इस साल जुलाई में, नवादा पुलिस ने दो लोगों को गिरफ्तार करने के लिए एक विशेष जांच दल का गठन किया और प्लास्टिक जैसे पदार्थों से बने 512 क्लोन अंगूठे के निशान बरामद किए।” विस्तृत कहानी देखें जिसमें पुलिस अधिकारियों के साक्षात्कार शामिल हैं जो बताते हैं कि वे कैसे मानते हैं कि धोखाधड़ी हुई है।

महीने की शुरुआत में, द हिंदू ने रिपोर्ट किया था कि गुजरात में दो लोगों को कथित तौर पर आधार और पैन कार्ड जैसे दो लाख पहचान प्रमाण दस्तावेज़ों को जाली बनाने और प्रत्येक को ₹15 से ₹200 में बेचने के आरोप में गिरफ्तार किया गया था।

डिजिटल व्यक्तिगत डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम, 2023

आप सभी आधार पर नजर रखने वालों के लिए डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम का क्या मतलब है? आधार परियोजना किसी कानून के अभाव में 2009 में शुरू हुई। लगभग दस साल बाद, आधार मामले में बहस के दौरान सरकार ने सुप्रीम कोर्ट से वादा किया था कि वह डेटा सुरक्षा कानून पारित करेगी। अंततः, भारत में अब तक एक सबसे बड़े डेटा उल्लंघनों से के कुछ ही सप्ताह बाद, केंद्र सरकार ने डिजिटल पर्सनल डेटा प्रोटेक्शन बिल, 2023 पारित किया। जो बाद मैं राष्ट्रपति की अनुमति के बाद 11 अगस्त को अधिनियम बना

यह कानून हमें पर्याप्त डेटा सुरक्षा प्रदान करने में विफल है, यह सरकार के लिए छूट भी बनाता है। इसका मतलब यह है कि व्यक्तिगत डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम आधार परियोजना पर भी लागू नहीं होगा (धारा 17 देखें)। यह उस प्रश्न का उत्तर देता है जो हममें से कुछ लोगों ने कुछ साल पहले उठाया था - क्या आधार परियोजना डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम के साथ मौजूद हो सकती है? इसका उत्तर हाँ है, क्योंकि डेटा संरक्षण अधिनियम इस पर लागू नहीं होता है।

आधार डेटा साझा करने के बारे में आधार अधिनियम क्या कहता है?

आधार अधिनियम 2016 की धारा 29 में कहा गया है कि मूल बायोमेट्रिक जानकारी कभी भी किसी के साथ साझा नहीं की जा सकती है और इसका उपयोग केवल आधार संख्या उत्पन्न करने और प्रमाणीकरण के लिए किया जा सकता है। धारा 29 (2) कहता है कि “ इस अिधिनयम के अधीन संगृहीत या सृजित  कोर बायोमैक सूचना से भिन्न  पहचान सम्बन्धी  सूचना, केवल इस अधिनियम के उपबंधों के अनुसार और ऐसी रीति से, जो विनियमों द्वारा विनिर्दिष्ट की जाए, साझा की जा सकेगी।” इसका मतलब है कि कोर बोमेट्रिक इनफार्मेशन सिर्फ आधार अधिनियम के तहत इकठ्ठा की गयी है वह सिर्फ इसी अधिनयम और विनियमों के अनुसार ही साझा की सकेगी.

धारा 29 (3 ) कहता है कि “ पहचान संबंधी जानकारी जो की अनुरोध करने वाली इकाई या ऑफ़लाइन सत्यापन चाहने वाली इकाई के पास उपलब्ध होगी-

(क) का उपयोग, प्रमाणीकरण या ऑफ़लाइन सत्यापन के लिए कोई भी जानकारी जमा करते समय व्यक्ति को लिखित रूप में सूचित किए गए उद्देश्यों के अलावा, किसी भी उद्देश्य के लिए उपयोग नहीं किया जाएगा ; या

(ख) का खुलासा, प्रमाणीकरण या ऑफ़लाइन सत्यापन के लिए कोई भी जानकारी जमा करते समय व्यक्ति को लिखित रूप में सूचित किए गए उद्देश्यों के अलावा, किसी भी उद्देश्य के लिए नहीं किया जाएगा। 

   बशर्ते यह कि खंड (ए) और (बी) के तहत उद्देश्य व्यक्ति को समझने योग्य स्पष्ट और सटीक भाषा में होंगे।

डेटा सरंक्षण अधिनियम 2023 के अंतर्गत छूट आधार अधिनियम की अवहेलना नहीं करती है. ऐसा प्रतीत होता है कि आधार अधिनियम की धारा 29 के तहत नोटिस की आवश्यकता अभी भी अधिनियम के तहत एकत्र और उपयोग की जाने वाली "मुख्य बायोमेट्रिक जानकारी" के अलावा किसी भी पहचान जानकारी पर लागू होनी चाहिए। साथ ही आधार (सूचना की सहभाजित) विनियम, 2016. क्या कभी किसी को अपनी पहचान संबंधी जानकारी साझा करने के बारे में प्राधिकरण या अनुरोधकर्ता इकाई से कोई नोटिस मिला है? यदि हाँ तो हमें बताएं!

निजता का उल्लंघन और पुलिस आपको कैसे ट्रैक कर सकती है

दो दिलचस्प मामले जी की आधार और पुलिस की लोगों को ट्रैक करने की क्षमता पर सवाल उठाते हैं। दोनों मामले लापता ऐसे व्यक्तियों से संबंधित हैं जो खोजे नहीं जाना चाहते थे। दिनाँक 01.09.2023 को, टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया ने रिपोर्ट किया कि, “धोबे गांव के किसान भोला यादव अपने बेटे को जाने नहीं देना चाहता, जिसके साथ वह सात साल बाद गुरुवार को फिर से मिला था। हालाँकि, बेटे ने कहा कि वह कभी घर लौटना ही नहीं चाहता था। बेटा 15 साल की उम्र में लापता हो गया और पुलिस ने उसके आधार नंबर को ट्रैक करके उसे ढूंढ लिया। रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि “जांच के दौरान पुलिस टीम को लापता युवक के आधार नंबर से जुड़ा एक बैंक खाता मिला। फिर उन्होंने खाते से जुड़े उसके सेल फोन को ट्रैक किया और उसे ढूंढने में कामयाब रहे.”

टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया की एक अन्य रिपोर्ट जो कि दिनाँक 14.09.2023 को प्रकाशित हुई थी उसमें कहा गया है कि 2018 में एक महिला लापता हो गई और उसका गायब होना उसके पति के साथ विवाद से जुड़ा था। वर्षों की खोज के बाद, जांचकर्ताओं को पता चला कि उसने अपना आधार कार्ड अपडेट कर लिया है। रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि "चेहरे की पहचान और डिजिटल जांच तकनीकों का उपयोग करके, पुलिस ने सफलतापूर्वक उसे गोवा तक ट्रैक किया जहां वह पाई गई जहाँ वह एक नया जीवन जी रही थी।"

पुलिस ने इन लोगों को इनका आधार नंबर का प्रयोग करके कैसे खोजा? क्या पुलिसकर्मी एक ही आधार नंबर का उपयोग करके कई लिंक किए गए डेटाबेस तक पहुंचने में सक्षम हैं? क्या डेटाबेस एकल आधार संख्या के लिए खोजे जाने योग्य हैं? लोगों की आधार से जुड़ी जानकारी तक पहुंचने के लिए पुलिस किस सॉफ्टवेयर और तकनीक का उपयोग कर रही है? क्या चेहरे की पहचान तकनीक को आधार से जोड़ा जा रहा है और निवासियों को ट्रैक करने के लिए इसका उपयोग किया जा रहा है?

महात्मा गाँधी नरेगा और आधार 

लिबटेक इंडिया के मित्रों ने मनरेगा में आधार की शुरूआत और योजना से श्रमिकों के नाम हटाने से संबंधित एक महत्वपूर्ण अध्ययन प्रकाशित किया है। एक वर्ष से अधिक समय तक मनरेगा में विलोपन पर नज़र रखते हुए, उन्होंने अक्टूबर 2022 और जून 2023 के बीच 600 से अधिक श्रमिकों का साक्षात्कार किया, और दिसंबर 2022 और मई 2023 के बीच में मनरेगा से जुड़े  अधिकारियों का साक्षात्कार लिया। उन्होंने आंध्र प्रदेश (एपी), गुजरात, झारखंड, ओडिशा और तेलंगाना सहित विभिन्न राज्यों को कवर किया। वे इकनोमिक एंड पोलिटिकल वीकली में लिखते हैं की, ““हमारा तर्क है कि आधार-आधारित हस्तक्षेपों की जटिलता और उनके कार्यान्वयन के तरीके का विलोपन की घटनाओं के साथ संबंध है। हम आधार हस्तक्षेपों को खोलकर और उनके औचित्य और जटिलता का आकलन करके शुरुआत करते हैं। हम आगे इस बात पैर भी चर्चा करते हैं कि आधिकारिक मनरेगा दस्तावेज़ विलोपन के बारे में क्या कहते हैं, और जमीनी स्तर पर विलोपन प्रथाओं और समाधान प्रक्रियाओं की संक्षेप में जांच करते हैं। अंत में, हम केंद्र सरकार की तकनीकी-समाधानवादी प्रवृत्तियों के एक लक्षण के रूप में आधार अनिवार्यता पर टिप्पणी करते हैं।”

रिमाइंडर! याद रखे आधार का वोटर पहचान पत्र से लिंक करना अनिवार्य नहीं है! इसको आगे तक पहुँचाइये!

जबकि आधार को लगभग हर चीज के लिए लगभग अनिवार्य बताया जा रहा है, इस बात को आगे तक शेयर करना न भूले कि - आपके आधार को अपने मतदाता पहचान पत्र के साथ जोड़ना अनिवार्य नहीं है, और इस बात को चुनाव आयोग ने भी सुप्रीम कोर्ट में स्पष्ट किया है।

हम किधर जा रहे हैं?

पांच साल पहले भारत के सर्वोच्च न्यायालय की संविधान पीठ ने कहा था कि आधार का उपयोग केवल कल्याण कार्यों के लिए किया जा सकता है। एक अलग फैसले में इसने आधार और पैन कार्ड को अनिवार्य रूप से जोड़ने की अनुमति दी थी। आर्टिकल 21 ट्रस्ट के मित्रों ने 2016 के बाद से यूआईडी परियोजना में विकास की एक संक्षिप्त सूची भी तैयार की है। आज, केंद्र सरकार आधार को हमारे दैनिक जीवन के हर क्षेत्र और पहलू में शामिल करने की कोशिश कर रही है, और इसने एक डेटा सरंक्षण कानून भी बनाया जो कि सरकार और इसके द्वारा चुने गए किसी भी व्यक्ति को देटा सरंक्षण अधिनियम 2023 के अनुपालन से छूट देता है।

प्रौद्योगिकी को लेकर चर्चा खोखली बनी हुई है। एक तरफ जहाँ हम से अपेक्षा की जाती है कि हम आधार योजना को राष्ट्रीय गौरव के प्रतीत के रूप में स्वीकृत करें तो वहीँ दूसरी ओर आधार को भूख से होने वाली मौतों और धोखा धरी से भी जोड़ कर देखा जा रहा है. 

यह खोखला राष्ट्रवाद इंडिया स्टैक प्रोजेक्ट में उत्पन्न हुआ है, जिसकी बुनियाद और शुरुआत आधार है। इंटरनेट गवर्नेंस प्रोजेक्ट ने इंडिया स्टैक पर जो एक निजी कंपनी है जो सार्वजनिक रूप से रखे गए संसाधनों का उपयोग करती है,  एक गहन रिपोर्ट प्रकाशित की है. एक नए "डिजिटल सार्वजनिक बुनियादी ढांचे" के रूप में आधार की पुनः ब्रांडिंग विशेष रूप से चिंताजनक है क्योंकि यह बेहद भ्रामक है, जो इस परियोजना के तहत जबरदस्ती और बहिष्करण के इतिहास को अस्पष्ट करता है। यह सार्वजनिक बुनियादी ढांचा किसके लिए है? कैसे लाखों भारतियों का डेटा का उपयोग किया जाएगा? आधार फैसले के पांच साल बाद, भविष्य गरिमा, निजता और स्वतंत्रता के लिए नई चुनौतियों से भरा दिख रहा है।

हम सभी को शुभकामनाएँ जो अभी भी विरोध कर रहे हैं, लिख रहे हैं, सोच रहे हैं! हम उम्मीद करते हैं कि इस सप्ताह तत्काल अपडेटस के लिए एक व्हाट्सएप चैनल लॉन्च करेंगे जिसके बारे आप सभी को सूचित किया जाएगा।

जैसा कि हम आधार फैसले के बाद के पांच वर्षों पर विचार करते हैं और भविष्य की ओर देखते हैं, हम खुद को याद दिलाते हैं कि हमारी आलोचनाएं और हमारा प्रतिरोध मजबूत बना हुआ है। और साथ ही प्रौद्योगिकी, सत्ता के केंद्रीकरण, राज्य और हमारी अपनी स्वतंत्रता के बारे में दस्तावेजीकरण और चिंतन का कार्य जारी है।

एकजुटता में,

To recap: Five significant limitations on the use of Aadhaar that the majority judgment recognised:

1. Aadhaar can only be made mandatory for welfare schemes (see Pg. 389, para 320 - 322). It was specifically held that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for earned benefits, like pension. The majority judgment also stated “At the same time, we hope that the respondents shall not unduly expand the scope of ‘subsidies, services and benefits’ thereby widening the net of Aadhaar, where it is not permitted otherwise.” (Pg. 391).

2. Private companies cannot use Aadhaar. Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act which allowed the use of Aadhaar authentication by private companies (body corporates) is unconstitutional (para 219 (e), 412, 447(1)(d)).

3. Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for children’s admission to school or for benefits under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Children cannot be denied benefits for lack of Aadhaar (See Pg. 393, para 325; Pg. 401, para 332). 

4. The storage of transaction data as per Regulation 26 of the Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations, 2016, was considered impermissible. (para 219 (b))

5. Authentication records are not to be kept beyond a period of six months (para 219 (a))

In blatant disregard of the limitations established by the judgment, the government continues to expand the use of Aadhaar to promote the UID at the cost of fundamental rights. 

Moody’s criticizes Aadhaar

Meanwhile, a reminder - biometrics are inaccurate. It has been widely reported that the credit ratings agency, Moody’s has released a report which highlights concerns with Aadhaar stating that “The system often results in service denials, and the reliability of biometric technologies, especially for manual laborers in hot, humid climates, is questionable”. The government has rebutted the report and says that the claims made are “baseless”.

Most Trusted ID in the world

While rebutting Moody's, the Modi government has made the incredible claim that Aadhaar is the most trusted Digital ID in the world. Criminal groups, always two steps ahead of any game, have been wildly innovative and inventive finding new ways to commit fraud with this most trusted ID. A personal favourite of ours was the UP gang which used toe prints to forge Aadhaar cards, then used by several people fraudulently taking bank loans. 

Decode reported this month - “The Bihar police is tired of frauds through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System. In July this year, the Nawada police formed a special investigating team to arrest two people and recovered 512 cloned thumb impressions made of plastic like substances”. Check out the in depth story which includes interviews with police officials who explain how they believe the frauds are committed. 

Earlier in the month, the Hindu reported that in Gujarat two persons were arrested allegedly for having forged two lakh identity proof documents like Aadhaar and PAN cards and sold them for ₹15 to ₹200 each.  Just remember, there’s no need to panic because we have a 13ft wall which protects the Aadhaar compound. 

Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 

What does the Data Protection Act mean for all you Aadhaar watchers out there? Five years after promising the Supreme Court that it would introduce a privacy bill, fourteen years after the cabinet note which led to the beginning of the Unique Identification project, and just a few weeks after one of the largest data breaches India has witnessed yet, the government passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023, which fails to provide us with adequate data protection and creates blanket exemptions for the state and therefore the Aadhaar programme (see Section 17), answering the question that some of us had posed some years ago - Can the Aadhaar project exist along with a Data Protection Act? The answer is yes, because the Data Protection Act does not apply to it.  

What does the Aadhaar Act say about sharing Aadhaar data? 

Section 29 of the Aadhaar Act 2016, states that core biometric information can never be shared with anyone and can only be used for generation of Aadhaar numbers and authentication. S. 29 (2) says that “The identity information, other than core biometric information, collected or created under this Act may be shared only in accordance with the provisions of this Act and in such manner as may be specified by regulations”. S. 29 (3) states that no identity information available with a requesting entity or offline verification-seeking entity shall be—

1. used for any purpose, other than the purposes informed in writing to the individual at the time of submitting any information for authentication or offline verification; or

2. disclosed for any purpose, other than purposes informed in writing to the individual at the time of submitting any information for authentication or offline verification:

Provided that the purposes under clauses (a) and (b) shall be in clear and precise language understandable to the individual.

Exemptions under the DPDP Act do not override the Aadhaar Act. It would appear that the requirement for notice under S. 29 of the Aadhaar Act must still apply to any identity information other than “core biometric information” collected and used under the Act. As well as the Aadhaar (Sharing of Information) Regulations, 2016. Has anyone ever received any notice from the UIDAI or a Requesting Entity about the sharing of their identity information? Let us know if you have!

Violations of privacy and how the police can track you

Two interesting cases raise questions about Aadhaar and the ability of the police to track people. Both cases relate to missing persons who did not want to be found. On 01.09.2023, the Times of India reported “Bhola Yadav, a farmer of Dhobe village, would not let go of his son with whom he was reunited on Thursday after seven years. However, the son said that he never wanted to return home”. The son went missing at the age of 15 and the police traced him by tracking his Aadhaar number. The report says that “During the probe, the police team found a bank account linked with the missing youth’s Aadhaar number. They then tracked his cell phone linked with the account and managed to find him…”

Another report dated 14.09.2023 from the Times of India states that a women went missing in 2018 and her disappearance was linked to a dispute with her husband. After years of pursuit, investigators discovered she had updated her Aadhaar card. The report states that “Police successfully tracked her to Goa where she was found, leading a new life, utilising facial recognition and digital investigation techniques.”

How did the police trace these people using their Aadhaar numbers? Are police personnel able to access multiple linked databases using a single Aadhaar number? Are databases searchable for single Aadhaar numbers? What software and technology is the police using to access people’s Aadhaar linked information? Is facial recognition technology being linked with Aadhaar and used to track residents? 

NREGA and Aadhaar 

Friends at Libtech India have published an important study correlating the introduction of Aadhaar and deletion of workers names from the MGNREGA. Tracking deletions in the MGNREGA for over a year, they have interviewed over 600 workers between October 2022 and June 2023, and interviewed officials bet­ween December 2022 and May 2023. They covered various states, including Andhra Pradesh (AP), Gujarat, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Telangana. They write in the Economic and Political Weekly - “We argue that the complexity of Aadhaar-based interventions and the manner of their rollout has a correlation with the spate of deletions. We begin by unpacking the Aadhaar interventions and assessing their rationale and complexity. We further discuss what official MGNREGA documents say about deletions, and briefly examine deletion practices and resolution procedures on the ground. Finally, we comment on the Aadhaar mandate as a symptom of the union government’s techno-solutionist tendencies.”

Libtech India’s working paper titled '“Assessment of wage payment delays for Aadhaar-based payments and impact on delays due to payments trifurcation by caste” examines technological interventions in the MGNREGA. They write “Many of these interventions were introduced without any consultation or scientific piloting. Consequently, some have violated the clauses of the Act, adversely afecting programme implementation. We demonstrate how two such digital technological interventions in MGNREGA - segregation of wage payments by caste, and Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) - have violated MGNREGA clauses. Our analysis is based on 31.36 million transactions across 10 states from Financial Year 2021-22 crawled from the programme’s Management Information System (MIS). 63% wage payments were delayed beyond the mandated 7 days by the union government and 42% were delayed beyond 15 days. We use the percentage of transactions processed within the mandated time by the union government as the metric to assess the performance. Notwithstanding delays in wage payments, we find there is a statistically significant diference in the time taken to process payments across caste. This is also the first large-scale data-based evidence demonstrating no statistically significant difference in the time taken to process wage payments through ABPS compared with traditional account-based payments.” This study demonstrates that the Aadhaar based payments system did not make improvements in MGNREGA payments.

Reminder! Spread the word! Aadhaar Voter ID linking is not mandatory! 

While Aadhaar continues to be pushed as mandatory for almost everything, remember to spread the word - it is not mandatory to link your UID with your Voter ID, as the Election Commission has so helpfully clarified to the Supreme Court.

Where are we heading?

Five years ago the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India said that Aadhaar could only be made mandatory for welfare. In a separate judgment it had allowed the mandatory linking of Aadhaar and PAN cards. Friends at the Article 21 Trust have compiled a brief list of developments in the UID project since 2016. Today, the Union Government continues to try to thrust Aadhaar into every sphere and aspect of our daily lives, as it creates a data protection law that exempts itself and anyone it chooses from compliance. 

The discourse around technology remains hollow. We are expected to treat the Aadhaar programme as a source of national pride while it continues to be linked to hunger deaths and fraud. This hollow nationalism is evoked in the India Stack project, of which Aadhaar forms the basis and beginning. The Internet Governance Project has published an in-depth report on the India Stack, "a set of APIs and associated platforms that operate across three critical sectors: identity, payments, and data". The report documents the use of Aadhaar in the creation of a structure of digital India through private companies that use publicly held resources. The re-branding of Aadhaar as a new “digital public infrastructure” is particularly concerning as it is deeply misleading, obfuscating the history of coercion and exclusion that the project carries. Who is this public infrastructure for? How will the data of millions of Indian residents be used? Five years after the Aadhaar judgment, the future looks full of novel challenges to dignity, privacy and liberty. 

All the best to all of us still resisting, writing, thinking

This week we hope to launch a WhatsApp channel for more immediate updates and will keep all of you informed.

As we reflect on five years since the Aadhaar judgment and look to the future, we remind ourselves that our critiques and our resistance remain strong. The work of documenting and thinking about technology, concentration of power, the state and our own liberty continues.

In solidarity,

हम आपको एक आवश्यक अपडेट के साथ लिख रहे हैं

पिछले कुछ वर्षों में आधार संबधित परियोजना के दस्तावेज़ीकरण और जानकारी एकत्रित हुए हमने पाया के अनिवार्य आधार परियोजना ने हाशिये पर, कमज़ोर ग़रीबों को बुरी तरह, क्रूरता के साथ प्रभावित किया है! बहुतों को एक छोटी बच्ची संतोषी की २०१७ मौत याद होगी जिनके परिवार को राशन नहीं इस लिए नहीं मिल सका क्योंकि उनका आधार राशन कार्ड से जुड़ा हुआ नहीं था. 

2018 में राइट टू फूड कैंपेन ने रिपोर्ट दी थी कि "कम से कम 19 मौतें सीधे आधार से जुड़ी थीं: मृतको सरकार द्वारा संचालित राशन की दुकानों ने भोजन राशन से इनकार कर दिया क्योंकि या तो उनके  राशन कार्ड आधार के साथ लिंक या "सीडेड" नहीं थे या आधार -आधारित बायोमेट्रिक प्रमाणीकरण विफल हो आगये थे ।

हम आज आपको ओडिशा के जाजपुर में एक और बच्चे की मौत की भयावय खबर के साथ लिख रहे हैं।

इस साल मार्च में कुपोषण के कारण एक बच्चे की मौत की खबरों के बाद, स्थानीय कार्यकर्ताओं, सामाजिक वैज्ञानिकों और पत्रकारों की एक तथ्यान्वेषी टीम ने घाटिसही गांव का दौरा किया। उनकी तथ्यान्वेषी रिपोर्ट यहां देखी जा सकती है।

रिपोर्ट में पाया गया  हेंब्रम तकरीबन ११ वर्ष का था जब उसकी ३ मार्च २०२३ सुबह मृत्यु हुई। उसके माता-पिता बांकू और तुलसी मजदूर के रूप में काम करते हैं।  बांकू ट्रैक्टर चालक एवं दिहाड़ी मजदूर के रूप में काम करता है;  तुलसी कृषि मजदूर और दिहाड़ी मजदूर के रूप में काम करती हैं।  वह परिवार की प्रमुख आय कमाने वाली है।  परिवार एक कमरे के प्रधानमंत्री आवास भवन में रहता है, जो कि बांकू के पिता को मिला था।  परिवार के पास न तो कृषि भूमि है और न ही उनके पास कोई पशु है।  जबकि बांकू और उनकी पत्नी तुलसी के पास आधार है, अर्जुन सहित  उनके किसी भी बच्चे के पास आधार संख्या नहीं है।  फैक्ट फाइंडिंग टीम ने यह भी पाया कि बच्चे के परिवार को 21 महीने से पीडीएस के माध्यम से राशन नहीं मिला था. अर्जुन की मां तुलसी यह नहीं समझ पा रही थीं कि उनका राशन कार्ड क्यों रद्द कर दिया गया था, टीम ने पाया कि उनके नाम की वर्तनी आधार कार्ड और उनके राशन कार्ड पर अलग-अलग लिखी गई थी, जिससे संभवतः राशन कार्ड और आधार को लिंक करने के की कोशिश में रद्द किया गया था।

टीम ने पाया कि अर्जुन हेम्ब्रम विकलांग बच्चा था, हालांकि उसके नाम पर कोई विकलांगता पेंशन नहीं मिली थी।  वह स्थानीय स्कूल में नामांकित नहीं था और मध्याह्न भोजन तक भी उसकी पोहोंच नहीं थी।  तथ्यान्वेषी रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि - "प्रभावित परिवार को विभिन्न सामाजिक सुरक्षा कार्यक्रम से कई बार बहिष्करण का शिकार होना पढ़ा है। परिवार के पास खेती योग्य भूमि नहीं है और वे पात्र होने के बाद भी राशन प्राप्त नहीं कर पाए हैं। और उन्हें शुरू में राशन कार्ड मिला था, मृतक समेत तीन बच्चो को विकलांगता पेंशन से बाहर रखा गया था, उनके [माता-पिता] मनरेगा जॉब कार्ड निरस्त कर दिए गए थे और इसका कारण स्पष्ट नहीं है, जिसके कारण उन्हें मनरेगा के काम से वंचित होना पढ़ा और पीएम-आवास योजना के तहत घर नहीं मिल रहा है।  सरपंच के अनुसार कुछ समय के लिए मनरेगा का काम रुका हुआ है और उन्होंने कहा कि एनएमएमएस ऐप के साथ लोगों की अनिच्छा इसका कारण है।

कुपोषण और भुखमरी से होने वाली मौतें कई कारकों की जटिल परस्पर क्रिया के कारण होती हैं, और हमने पाया है कि आधार को लागू करने से मौजूदा समास्याएं बढ़ जाती है। 

आधार कार्यक्रम के भीतर के मुद्दों को टेक्नोलॉजी से परिचित शब्द दिए गए हैं जो कार्यक्रम की लागत को हल्का और अस्पष्ट करते हैं।  जब लोग राशन कार्ड और आधार में नाम  बेमेल होने  के कारण दोनो को लिंक करने में असमर्थ होते हैं, या जब इंटरनेट विफल हो जाता है, या जब उंगलियों के निशान काम नहीं करते हैं, तो हमे कहां जाता हैं की यह समस्याएं बिलकुल वैसी ही हैं जैसा कि एक बच्चा अभी ठोस भोजन खाना सीख रहा है बजाए राज्य के स्वम्मित्व वाले कार्यक्रम के की जिसको  आबादी पर अनिवार्य रूप से थोपा गया है और जो कई लोगों को उनके मौलिक अधिकारों और अधिकारों से बाहर करता है।  बहिष्करण को जनसंख्या के प्रतिशत में मापा जाता है, जिसे नगण्य या कार्रवाई के लिए पर्याप्त महत्वपूर्ण नहीं माना जाता है, और कार्यक्रम के कामकाज के लिए केंद्रीय मुद्दों को कार्यान्वयन के मुद्दों के रूप में देखा जाता है, न कि कार्यक्रम की आंतरिक विफलताओं के कारण जिसकी वजह से भुखमरी, मृत्यु की स्थिति पैदा होती है।

जब सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने आदेश दिया कि आधार सलंगन को अनिवार्य करना कल्याणकारी नामावली में शामिल लोगों के लिए उचित है, तो इसनेआधार  को जोड़ने से होने वाले बड़े बहिष्करण संबंधी नुकसानों पर पर्याप्त रूप से विचार नहीं किया था।

2021 में, सुप्रीम कोर्ट 3 करोड़ राशन कार्डों को हटाने को चुनौती देने वाली एक जनहित याचिका की सुनवाई पर सहमति जताई, क्योंकि वे आधार से जुड़े नहीं थे। याचिका झारखंड, यूपी, ओडिशा, कर्नाटक, एमपी, महाराष्ट्र, बिहार, छत्तीसगढ़, पश्चिम बंगाल, आंध्र प्रदेश, तेलंगाना में भुखमरी से होने वाली मौतों का ज़िक्र करती है। इन हटाए गए राशन कार्डो के बारे में शुरू में यह कहकर जश्न मनाया गया व उन्हें हटाना उचित ठहराया गया की वे नक़ली राशन कार्ड थे, हालाँकि बाद की जांच से पता चला कि राशन कार्ड धारकों को कभी नोटिस नहीं दिया गया था। बाद की रिपोर्टों ने भी निष्कर्ष निकाला कि राशन कार्ड असली थे। मामला अभी भी सुप्रीम कोर्ट में लंबित है।

हम यूआईडीएआई के वरिष्ठ अधिकारियों से जवाबदेही की मांग करते हैं जो आधार कार्यक्रम का संचालन और कार्यान्वयन करते हैं, साथ ही साथ राष्ट्रीय खाद्य सुरक्षा अधिनियम, 2013 के तहत संबंधित अधिकारीयों से, जिनकी ज़िम्मेदारी यह सुनिश्चित करना है कि लोग भोजन के अपने मौलिक अधिकार का उपयोग करने में सक्षम हैं

रिथिंक आधार  सिविल सोसाइटी फोरम ऑन ह्यूमन राइट्स (सीएसएफएचआर), ओडिशा खाद्य अधिकार अभियान और जन स्वस्त अभियान द्वारा की गई प्रमुख मांगों के समर्थन में है, जिनकी रूपरेखा नीचे दी गई है:

 • बिना आधार वाले बच्चों को पीडीएस से बाहर रखना इस समुदाय के लिए चिंता का विषय है।  सभी छूटे हुए बच्चों और वयस्कों को तुरंत पीडीएस में शामिल करने के लिए कदम उठाए जाने चाहिए और आधार जमा करने का दायित्व समुदाय पर नहीं छोड़ा जाना चाहिए।  प्रशासन को यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए कदम उठाने चाहिए कि आधार के अभाव में एक भी व्यक्ति सिस्टम से बाहर न रहे।

 • भारतीय सर्वोच्च न्यायालय के पीयूसीएल बनाम यूनियन ऑफ इंडिया एंड अदर (सिविल रिट पेटिशन 196 साल 2001) अंतरिम आदेशों के अनुसार और नई शिक्षा नीति, 2023, सरकार समर्थित सामाजिक सुरक्षा और खाद्य और पोषण सुरक्षा योजनाओं और कार्यक्रमों का लाभ उठाने के लिए आधार सीडिंग आवश्यक / अनिवार्य नहीं है।  आधार सीडिंग संबंधी मुद्दों के कारण किसी भी बच्चे/परिवार को उनके अधिकारों से वंचित नहीं किया जाना चाहिए।

• जिला प्रशासन को सभी क्षेत्रों के आंगनबाड़ी केंद्रों में सभी बच्चों का वजन करने की आवश्यकता है ताकि कुपोषण से पीड़ित बच्चों की पहचान की जा सके और बच्चों में कुपोषण के सामुदायिक प्रबंधन के लिए तत्काल कदम उठाए जा सकें।  प्रत्येक माह विवेकपूर्ण ढंग से बच्चों का वजन एवं कुपोषण मापन किया जाना चाहिए तथा सभी आंगनवाड़ी केन्द्रों को नियमित निगरानी के साथ आवश्यक उपकरण एवं प्रशिक्षण प्रदान किया जाना चाहिए।

 • टीम ने जाना कि स्कूल में मिड डे मील समुदाय के बच्चों के लिए पहला और प्राथमिक भोजन है।  प्रशासन को स्कूलों में पौष्टिक नाश्ता कार्यक्रम शुरू करने के लिए कदम उठाने चाहिए जिन्हें डीएमएफ के तहत समर्थन दिया जा सकता है।  साथ ही समुदाय के परिवार तथा विशेष रूप से बच्चे गर्मी की छुट्टियों के दौरान अत्यधिक भोजन संकट से गुजरते हैं, यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए कदम उठाए जाने चाहिए कि बच्चों के लिए गर्मियों की छुट्टियों के दौरान भी एमडीएम जारी रहे।

 • एक सार्वभौमिक पात्रता दृष्टिकोण के तहत भी, वृद्ध और विकलांग लोगों, दलितों और जनजातीय समूहों को भोजन, स्वास्थ्य सेवाओं और लाभों के विशिष्ट बिना शर्त समर्थन की आवश्यकता हैं  सामुदायिक रसोई अनिश्चित भोजन और पोषण की स्थिति वाले परिवारों के लिए एक सामंजस्यपूर्ण समाधान प्रदान कर सकती है।

 • स्कूल न जाने वाले बच्चे सबसे कमजोर होने के बावजूद स्कूल भोजन कार्यक्रम से बाहर रह जाते हैं;  उन्हें बिना किसी शर्त के सभी खाद्य कार्यक्रमों तक पहुंचने की अनुमति दी जानी चाहिए।

 • मृतक के परिवार से तीन विकलांग बच्चे, हालांकि सामाजिक सुरक्षा पेंशन के लिए पात्र हैं, उन्हें टीम विजिट के समय तक योजना के तहत नहीं जोड़ा गया है।  सभी आंगनवाड़ी केंद्रों में विकलांग बच्चों के बारे में विवरण है, जिला प्रशासन द्वारा आवश्यक दस्तावेजों की व्यवस्था करने और पेंशन योजना के तहत विकलांग बच्चों और वयस्कों को शामिल करने के लिए कदम उठाए जाने चाहिए।  सभी पात्र लेकिन छूटे हुए परिवारों को जल्द से जल्द पेंशन योजना के तहत शामिल किया जाना चाहिए जिससे परिवारों की वित्तीय और खाद्य सुरक्षा मजबूत होगी।

 • वृद्धावस्था पेंशन लाभार्थियों की संख्या को पेंशन योजना में नकदी से बैंक हस्तांतरण में परिवर्तन के बाद समस्याओं का सामना करना पड़ रहा है।  इससे वृद्ध व्यक्तियों में अत्यधिक कठिनाई और भुखमरी हो सकती है।  राज्य को यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए कदम उठाने चाहिए कि कोई भी पेंशन लाभार्थी इस परिवर्तन के कारण बाहर न हो या पेंशन प्राप्त करना बंद न करे और उन्हें जल्द से जल्द नकद राशि दी जाए।

 • मनरेगा जो लगातार ग्रामीण कार्य और आय सुरक्षा के मामले में संजीवनी साबित हुई है, टीम को बताया गया कि एनएमएमएस ऐप में समस्या के कारण योजना के तहत काम रोक दिया गया है।  इस मुद्दे को तुरंत हल करने के लिए कदम उठाए जाने चाहिए और सभी परिवारों को जॉब कार्ड प्रदान किए जाने चाहिए और गांव को आवश्यक संख्या में काम आवंटित किया जाना चाहिए।  जिला खनिज निधि (डीएमएफ) और मनरेगा निधियों का उपयोग निजी कृषि भूमि और सामुदायिक भूमि के विकास के लिए किया जा सकता है, विशेष रूप से मिट्टी और जल संरक्षण, ग्रामीण बुनियादी ढांचे और सामुदायिक संपत्तियों के विकास के लिए।  मनरेगा की शुरुआत समुदाय में एक कार्यात्मक क्रेच भी होनी चाहिए जो माँ को सार्वजनिक कार्य कार्यक्रमों के तहत काम करने के लिए मुक्त करेगी।

 • टीम ने यह भी जाना कि किसी भी परिवार के पास कृषि योग्य भूमि नहीं है, परिवारों को एफआरए के तहत शामिल करने के लिए आवश्यक कदम उठाए जाने चाहिए और अधिनियम के तहत व्यवहार्यता को देखते हुए भूमि आवंटित की जानी चाहिए। 

 • पंचायती राज संस्थाओं (पीआरआई) के सदस्यों को पभूख और कुपोषण, गुणवत्तापूर्ण शिक्षा का अधिकार, स्वास्थ्य सेवाओं और लाभ, खाद्य और पोषण सुरक्षा, सामाजिक सुरक्षा लाभ और मजदूरी रोजगार के मुद्दों को संबोधित करने के लिए अधिक सक्रिय भूमिका निभाने की जरूरत है, विषेश रूप से वर्ष के लिए पीरियड में। ब्लॉक और जिला प्रशासन के साथ बेहतर समन्वय की अधिक आवश्यकता है।

जिन कंपनियों ने भूमि और प्राकृतिक संसाधनों से लाभ उठाया है, उन्होंने कठिनाई और प्रदूषण के अलावा समुदायों को वापस देने के लिए शायद ही कोई उपाय किया है।  वे यह सुनिश्चित करने के लिए प्रशासन से कम जवाबदेह नहीं हैं कि उनके आसपास कोई परिवार भूख से न रहे।  टाटा स्टील और अन्य जैसी कंपनियों को आवश्यक संसाधनों का आवंटन करना चाहिए और एक स्पष्ट एकीकृत और समग्र विकास रणनीति विकसित करनी चाहिए और जाजपुर जिले के आदिवासी क्षेत्रों में एक मिशन मोड पर लागू करना चाहिए।  समुदायों की खाद्य और आय सुरक्षा सुनिश्चित करने के लिए खाद्य और पोषण सुरक्षा, लैंगिक समानता और महिला सशक्तीकरण, जलवायु-लचीली पुनर्योजी कृषि प्रणालियों और प्रथाओं को बढ़ावा देने पर ध्यान दिया जाना चाहिए।

We write to you today with sadness of the news of the death of another child, in Jajpur, Odisha. 

Following news reports that a child had died in March of this year due to malnutrition, a fact-finding team of local activists, social scientists and journalists visited Ghatisahi village. Their fact-finding report can be found here. 

The report found that Arjun Hembram was around 11 years old when he died on the morning of the 3rd of March, 2023. His parents Banku and Tulasi work as labourers. Banku works as a tractor driver cum daily wage labour; Tulasi works as an agricultural labour and daily wage labour. She is the major bread earner of the family. The family stays in a one-room Pradhan Mantri Awas building, which was sanctioned to Banku’s father. The family has neither agricultural land nor livestock. While Banku and his wife Tulasi have Aadhaar numbers, none of the children, including Arjun have Aadhaar numbers. The fact-finding team also found that the child’s family had not received rations through the PDS for 21 months. While Arjun’s mother Tulasi was not able to understand why her ration card had been cancelled, the team found that her name was spelt differently on her Aadhaar card and on her ration card, likely leading to the cancellation of the ration card in the process of attempting to link both.

The team found that Arjun Hembram was a child with a disability, however, no disability pension was received in his name. He was not enrolled in the local school and had no access to mid-day meals. The fact-finding report notes that – “the affected household faces multiple exclusion from different social protection programmes the family is without cultivable land and has been excluded from receiving ration for even after being eligible and were initially got a ration card, three children including the deceased were excluded from disability pension, their [the parents’] MGNREGA job card was deleted and reason for which is unclear leading to they being denied from MGNREGA work and not getting a house under PM-Awas scheme. According to the Sarpanch the MGNREGA work was stopped for some time being and he cited people's reluctance with NMMS app being one of the reasons for the same.”

Malnutrition and starvation deaths are caused by a complex interaction of many factors, and we have found that the imposition of Aadhaar exacerbates existing vulnerabilities.

Issues within the Aadhaar programme are given terms familiar to technological innovation that lighten and obscure the cost of the programme. When people are unable to link Aadhaar with ration cards due to a mismatch in their names on both, or when the internet fails, or when fingerprints don’t work, we are told to call these “teething problems” bringing to mind a small toddler who is just learning to eat solid food, rather than a state-owned programme mandatorily imposed on population which excludes many from their fundamental rights and entitlements. Exclusion is measured in the percentage of the total population, which is downplayed as being insignificant or not significant enough for action, and issues central to the functioning of the programme are seen as implementation issues rather than intrinsic failures of the programme leading to situations of crises, starvation, death and the destruction of welfare. Every instance of exclusion comes at a grave human cost.

When the Supreme Court held that mandating Aadhaar linkage was acceptable for people on welfare programmes, it had not adequately considered the vast exclusionary harms Aadhaar seeding caused.

In 2021, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a public interest petition, challenging the deletion of 3 crore ration cards, because they were not linked to Aadhaar. The petition documents starvation deaths taking place in Jharkhand, U.P., Odisha, Karnataka, M.P., Maharashtra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana. These deleted cards were initially justified (and celebrated) as being due to fake ration cards, but subsequent investigation showed that the ration card holders were never given notice. Subsequent reports also concluded that the ration cards were genuine. The case is still pending in the Supreme Court. 

We demand accountability from senior officials of the UIDAI who administer and implement the Aadhaar programme, as well as the relevant authorities under the National Food Security Act, 2013, whose mandate is to ensure that people are able to access their fundamental right to food. 

Rethink Aadhaar stands in support of the key demands made by the Civil Society Forum on Human Rights (CSFHR), Odisha Khadya Adhikar Abhijan and Jan Swasta Abhiyan, outlined below: 

• Exclusion of children without Aadhaar from PDS is an issue of concern in this community. Steps must be taken to ensure all left out children and adults are added to the PDS immediately and the onus of submitting Aadhaar should not be left to the community. Administration must take steps to ensure not a single person is excluded from the system for want of Aadhaar. 

• As per the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India’s interim orders on the PUCL Vs. Union of India and others (Civil Writ Petition 196 of 2001) and also the New Education Policy, 2023, Aadhaar seeding is not necessary/mandatory for availing Government supported social security and food and nutritional security schemes and programmes. No child/family should be excluded from their entitlements due to Aadhaar seeding related issues. 

• The district administration needs to initiate weighing of all children in the AWCs across the regions in a mission mode to identify children suffering from malnutritionand take immediate steps for community management of malnutrition amongst children. The weighing and malnutrition measurement of children should be done every month judiciously and all AWCs should be provided with necessary equipment and training with regular monitoring. 

• The team understood that Mid Day Meal in the school is the first and primary meal for the children in the community. The administration must take steps to introduce nutritious breakfast programmes in the schools which can be supported under DMF. Also the families especially the children go through extreme food crises during summer holidays, steps must be taken to ensure MDM is continued even during summer breaks for the children. 

• Even under a universal entitlement approach, aged and disabled people, dalits, and tribal groups would need specific unconditional support of food, health services and benefits. Community kitchens could provide a cohesive solution for families with precarious food and nutrition conditions. 

• Out-of-school children are left out of the school meal programme, despite being the most vulnerable; they should be allowed to access all feeding programmes unconditionally.

• Three children with disability from the deceased’s family, though eligible for social security pension, have not been added under the scheme till the time of visit. All AWCs have details regarding children with disability, steps must be taken by the district administration to arrange necessary documents and include children and adults with disability under the pension scheme. All eligible but left out families must be included under the pension scheme as soon as possible which would strengthen financial and food security of the families.  

• Numbers of old age pension beneficiaries are said to be facing problems after the transition in the pension scheme from cash in hand to bank transfer. This can lead to extreme hardship and hunger among the aged persons. State must take steps to ensure no pension beneficiaries are excluded or cease to receive pension due to the transition and they are given cash in hand as soon as possible. 

• The MGNREGA which has consistently proved to be a  lifeline when it comes to rural work and income security, the team was told that work under the scheme has been put on hold due to the problem faced with the NMMS app. The steps must be taken to sort out the issue immediately and all households must be provided with job cards and necessary numbers of work is allocated to the village. District Mineral Fund (DMF) and MGNREGS funds can be utilized for developing private agricultural lands and community lands, especially for soil and water conservation, development of village infrastructure and community assets. The initiation of MGNREGA should also be with a functional crèche in the community which would free the mother to work under public work programs. 

• The team also understood that none of the households have cultivable agricultural land, necessary steps must be taken to include the households under FRA and land is being allocated looking at the feasibility under the Act. 

• Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) members need to play a more proactive role to address issues of chronic hunger and malnourishment, right to quality education, health services and benefits, food and nutritional security, social security benefits and wage employment, especially during the lean periods of the year. There is a greater need for better co-ordination with the Block and District administration.

• The companies which have benefited from the land and natural resources have hardly taken any measures to give back to the communities other than hardship and pollution. They are no less accountable than the administration to ensure no family lives with hunger in their vicinity. The companies like Tata Steel and others must allocate necessary resources and develop a clear integrated and overall development strategy and implemented on a Mission mode in the tribal pockets of Jajpur district. Focus should be on food and nutritional security, gender equality and women’s empowerment, promotion of Climate-resilient regenerative agriculture systems and practices to ensure food and income security of the communities.