India has reduced the restrictions imposed on the Aadhaar authentication service, which is the digital identity assistance framework associated with biological measurements for more than 1.4 billion people, to allow companies including those who provide services such as e -commerce, travel, hospitality and health care to use the authentication system for approval for their customers. The update has sparked privacy concerns because New Delhi has not yet determined the handrails that will be seen to avoid abuse of biometric identifiers for individuals.
Friday, the Indian Ministry of Information Technology foot Aadhaar for the rational rule (social welfare, innovation, knowledge) the amendment rules, 2025 to amend the legislation that was submitted in 2020 as a result of the rule of the Supreme Court that restricted The arrival of special entities that seek to obtain aadhaar data. The new amendment comes nearly two years after the Indian government Her general consultation startedResponses that have not been disclosed.
The update aims to “enhance the scope and benefit of authenticity of Aadhaar by” allowing Aadhaar to improve services “and” empowering both government and non -governmental entities to benefit from Aadhaar authentication service to provide various services in the public interest, “Ministry of Information Technology He said In her press statement.
Compared to their previous version, the modified rules ruled out the sub -base that allowed Aadhaar to prevent “public funds”. This expands the unique scope of identity -based verification provided by the unique identity body of the Indian government in India (Uidai) and expanding the authentication service to various public and private sectors. In the past, bank and communications services operators used Aadhaar most mostly to develop new customers and verify their current consumers.
Aadhaar’s approval of 129.93 billion in January amounted to 109.13 billion in February last year, per Uidai. The National Informatics Center, the National Health Agency, the State Bank for India, the Barouda Bank, and the National Punjab Bank were among the best entities that use Aadhaar to verify its users this month.
According to the new rules, the entities that are looking to enable the Aadhaar authentication will be asked to “apply with the details of the intended requirements in the relevant ministry, the Ministry of Central or the state government” that “will be examined by Uidai and Meity [the IT ministry]The government stated that this will approve these requests on the recommendation of Uidai.
“What are the criteria that Meity and Uidai will take into account to assess such requests, they should be more clear and more transparent to abuse, which is explained by the Supreme Court during trading in Article 57 of the Aadhaar Law.” Kamesh Shekar, a digital governance in New Delhi technology policy, is considering dialogue.
Article 57 of the 2016 Aadhaar Law, which was dropped by the Supreme Court in 2018, allowed the entities for the use of Aadhaar numbers to create individual identities. The Indian government amended the Aadhaar Act in 2019 to enable the voluntary approval on the basis of Aadhaar. However, this amendment has been challenged and is currently suspended in the Supreme Court.
Prasanna S, a lawyer for the Supreme Court, who was among the defenders fighting for the right to privacy and challenge the Aadhaar Law, the amendment of attempts to “rearrange” Section 57.
“The licensing system exists even early under the 2020 bases. But now, with the expansion of access, anxiety is enhanced by the type of multi -phase system.”
Sidhath Deeb, Assistant Director of Public Policy at the New Atueli Consulting Company, said that the authenticity of Aadhaar bears the risk of exclusion.
“Once you start linking the documents of the identifier or identity tools by accessing digital services, there is always a risk of exclusion,” he said. “We really need to start thinking about how to introduce our voluntary so that citizens have the greatest possible self -rule to be able to reach digital services in a way that cannot be contacted as much as possible.”
Techcrunch communicate with the Indian Ministry of Information Technology about the main concerns raised by politicians and measures in force to prevent the misuse of Aadhaar and will update when the ministry responds.
