Call for better regulations on Aadhaar governance and privacy

India’s Aadhaar identification system is a biometric identification of citizens, meant to streamline and universalise service delivery mechanisms through documentation of people’s demographic and biometric data. Aadhaar enrolment, which was voluntary earlier, through the Aadhaar Act 2016 became a mandatory requirement in 2018 for availing state scheme benefits, leading to a trade of personal information for provisions that people are constitutionally entitled to. The strong push for universalising Aadhaar severely impacted communities that lacked the ability to face the challenges and data protection implications. This created reservations about the implications such a vast data set could have on data security, privacy, and increased state oversight potentially restricting personal freed