Minors can’t opt out of Aadhaar after attaining majority: UIDAI to top court

Minors, whose Aadhaar card has already been generated, cannot opt out of the Aadhaar scheme after attaining majority, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Tuesday told the Supreme Court.

Attorney General K K Venugopal was referring to the written replies of UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey to the queries posed by the petitioners, opposed to the Aadhaar scheme and its enabling 2016 law, before a fivejudge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, reports PTI.

He said that school authorities can act as introducers to get children, between the age group of 5 to 15 years, enrolled for Aadhaar with the parental consent.

Responding to a query whether a child, after attaining the age of 18 years, can opt out, the top law officer told the bench, also comprising justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chanadrachud and Ashok Bhushan, that it is not permissible under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.

“However, residents have the option of permanently locking their biometrics and only temporarily unlocking it when needed for biometric authentication as per Regulation 11 of the Aadhaar (Authentication) Regulations, 2016,” he said.

The lawyers for the petitioners had given a list of queries to the UIDAI CEO after he had concluded his PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) to allay apprehensions with regard the Aadhaar scheme.

In response to the query as to what were the Aadhaar authentication failure rates in the states and at the national level, Venugopal said the UIDAI cannot provide authentication failure rates at the state level since it does not track the location of the authentication transactions.

Referring to the data, he further said that the biometric failure rates are at 6 per cent for fingerprints and 8.54 per cent for iris at the national level.