Indian student group wants to suspend Aadhaar, NPR enrollment

A student group in Northern India has come out and asked the government to suspend biometric enrollment and to stop the implementation of Aadhaar in Meghalaya.

According to a report in the Assam Tribune, The Khasi Students’ Union has asked to suspend enrolment as the state needs more adequate mechanisms in place to control influx.

“Our demand from the State government is to stop this biometric enrollment and implementation of Aadhaar,” KSU supremo Daniel Khyriem is quoted to have said in the Assam Tribute report. “Amidst our focus on the need to have strong mechanisms to check influx, this enrolment will defeat the purpose of checking the menace of influx in the state.”

Reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, the fourth phase of the Aadhaar program has just been approved by the Cabinet Committee on the Unique Identification Authority of India. The fourth phase aims to enroll another 400 million people.

This isn’t the first snag for the Aadhaar program and NPR enrollment.

Confirming the worst fears of those already untrusting of national biometric systems, the Maharashtra government lost the biometric data of about 300,000 Aadhaar applicants as it was being uploaded by the state information technology department. 

In addition, several banks in India have vocally come out against a platform created by the UIDAI, which would see Aadhaar numbers used to authenticate ID before every transaction regarding bank accounts receiving welfare benefits. According to reports, resistance is rooted in two main concerns: Banks want the UIDAI to bear liabilities related to false identification and the UIDAI wants banks to reconfigure existing systems to its interoperable solution.

Article Topics

Aadhaar  |  biometric enrollment  |  India  |  NPR  |  students