The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Friday notified the Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance Amendment Rules, 2025, allowing private companies to use Aadhaar authentication for delivering services under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.

The move is aimed at enhancing citizens’ “ease of living” and enabling “better access to services”, the ministry said in a statement.

“The amendment [to the 2020 Aadhaar rules] enables both government and non-government entities to avail Aadhaar authentication service…It will help both the service providers as well as the service seekers to have trusted transactions,” the statement read.

Private entities seeking to use Aadhaar authentication must first apply to the appropriate government ministry or department. The applications will be reviewed by the Unique Identification Authority of India.

The IT ministry will then grant approval based on the authority’s recommendation and empanel the entity to carry out Aadhaar authentication of its customers.

Aadhaar refers to a unique 12-digit number assigned to all card-holders after collecting their fingerprints and eye scans. The database contains information such as residents’ names, addresses and birth dates. The data is used to authenticate citizens’ identities before they can receive public welfare. The project was created by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009 to reduce leakages in the country’s welfare programmes.

“This amendment has been done to help in improving transparency and inclusivity in the decision-making process,” the ministry said. “The amendment would help people seamlessly avail the services of e-commerce, travel, tourism, hospitality and health sector etc. being provided by entities other than government entities also.”

Prasanna S, an advocate-on-record in the Supreme Court, who had challenged the constitutionality of Aadhaar, was quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying that the expansion was part of the “spectre of a surveillance state”, “unwarranted” and violative of the top court’s judgment that struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, to disallow private entities from using Aadhaar authentication services.

On September 26, 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of most of the Aadhaar Act but struck down parts of it, including Section 57, as unconstitutional. This effectively banned private companies from using Aadhaar data for identity authentication.

Section 57 had allowed the state as well as any corporate body or person to use Aadhaar “for establishing the identity of an individual for any purpose”.

In his judgement for the majority, Justice AK Sikri had said that the provisions of Section 57 were disproportionate to a degree and amounted to an unconstitutional interference in an individual’s fundamental right to privacy.

“The 2025 amendment to the rules…attempts to virtually re-legislate what was struck down,” Prasanna S told the Hindustan Times.

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