What is Aadhaar, and is there a 2026 name-correction rule?

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1. 1

   Aadhaar (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 7, 2026Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “Aadhaar is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India based on their place of residence, biometrics and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a statutory authority established in January 2016 by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, following the provisions of the Aadhaar Act, 2016. Applicants to Aadhaar receive an Aadhaar UID Card used to identify a resident of India. However, following a series of Supreme Court rulings and provision of the Aadhar Act, it is not considered proof of Indian citizenship, domicile, address, date of birth, and age. It cannot be used as an identification document for international travel. As of May 2023, more than 99.9% of India's adult population had been issued an Aadhaar, making it the world's largest biometric ID system. Aadhaar is also the basis for MOSIP, an open source identity system used by nation states, especially in the African region. A new Aadhaar app, which replaced the former mAadhar app, was launched on 28 January 2026.”

2. 2

   Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (Wikipedia)

   WikipediaPublished Oct 6, 2026Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (transl. Unique Identification (UID) Act, 2016) is a money bill of the Parliament of India. It aims to provide legal backing to the Aadhaar unique identification number project. It was passed on 11 March 2016 by the Lok Sabha. Certain provisions of the Act came into force from 12 July 2016 and published in the Gazette of India on 12 September 2016.”

3. 3

   The Digital-physical Disconnect in Digital ID: A Case of Aadhaar-based Authentication Failures Due to Outdated Physical Cards

   Information Technology for Development (Moharil & Jha)Published Jan 1, 2026Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “This paper examines authentication failures in India's Aadhaar system as a data justice concern, identifying a previously undocumented demographic authentication failure mechanism. Fieldwork in Maharashtra's school education system documents authentication failures caused by individuals submitting Aadhaar copies with outdated demographic information following demographic updates in Unique Identification Authority of India's (UIDAI) database. We introduce the concept of 'physical primacy' to explain how end users conceptualise digital ID through its physical manifestation while remaining unaware of the dynamic relationship between physical cards and centralised databases. The study reveals that UIDAI's system design failed to account for residents' material-centric understanding of Aadhaar, leaving the system vulnerable to authentication failures. The paper argues that this failure mechanism constitutes a form of data injustice requiring recognition in both scholarship and policy and proposes design interventions for UIDAI to address exclusion patterns currently embedded in system architecture.”

4. 4

   Aadhaar: Governing with Biometrics

   South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies (Rao & Nair)Published May 4, 2019Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “Aadhaar means ‘foundation’ or ‘support’ in several Indian languages. Utter the word ‘aadhaar’ anywhere across the length and breadth of India today, and you will most certainly evoke India’s nation...”

5. 5

   Seeing Like an Infrastructure: Low-resolution Citizens and the Aadhaar Identification Project

   Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (Singh & Jackson)Published Oct 13, 2021Checked Oct 14, 2026

   “Building on James Scott's work on 'seeing like a state', we conceptualize 'seeing like an infrastructure' as a more supple analytic perspective that maps the distributed work and uneven consequences through which designers, bureaucrats, and users (here, citizens) assign or claim representation in the consequential data systems that increasingly shape and define citizenship. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork into Aadhaar, India's biometrics-based identification project, and studies of infrastructure, marginalization, and citizenship in CSCW and allied fields, we argue that this perspective provides crucial insight into the strategies and mechanisms by which effective access to the basic rights and entitlements of citizenship are granted, claimed, and at times undermined. More specifically, we show how challenges in implementing Aadhaar's three key processes-enrollment, seeding, and authentication-give rise to a spectrum of resolution in which the rights and entitlements of 'high-resolution citizens' are expanded, while those of 'low-resolution citizens' are curtailed.?”