Aadhaar law will add scope, match data privacy rules

As India's data privacy law approaches notification, another law that is behind a unique identification number for citizens is being prepped for overhaul to bring it in sync with the new privacy law, a move industry experts said is overdue but needs wider consultation.

- Jatin Grover & Shouvik Das

Bhuvnesh Kumar, the new chief executive of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), the governing body behind Aadhaar identification, said that discussions "will now begin and take its due course of lawmaking" for a new law to replace the near-decade-old Aadhaar Act, 2016.

"Just an amendment won't be sufficient—we need a new law to bring Aadhaar up to speed with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act), 2023," Kumar said in his first interview since taking charge of UIDAI on 3 January.

Pointing out that the DPDP Act was not there when the Aadhaar law was made, Kumar, who is also the additional secretary at the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity), said the current Aadhaar law is quite restrictive and needs to be changed.

"Aadhaar's usage has been limited by legal restrictions and the requirement for authentication. It is linked to benefits and subsidies, but has far more potential than that," he added.

To be sure, the current Aadhaar Act was enacted nearly a decade ago and, thus, does not always comply with the rules under the DPDP Act. This includes rules on data sharing, data transfer and a host of other regulations.