In a move that resembles long-overdue damage control rather than a proactive reform, the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) has deactivated more than 20mn (million) (2 crore) Aadhaar numbers belonging to deceased individuals as part of a nationwide clean-up exercise aimed at enhancing the accuracy and security of the country’s digital identity ecosystem. Last year in July, UIDAI deactivated 11.7mn Aadhaar numbers belonging to deceased individuals. Shockingly, according to the government’s own admission in April 2023, over 60mn Aadhaar numbers were still held by individuals who were no longer alive — a fact that exposes the scale of the problem UIDAI has only just begun to address. In other words, there still are 28.3mn 'ghost' Aadhaar numbers in the system.
In an official statement, the authority says the large-scale deactivation was undertaken after obtaining deceased persons’ data from the registrar general of India (RGI), state and Union Territory (UT) governments, the public distribution system (PDS), and the national social assistance programme, among other sources. UIDAI is also exploring partnerships with financial institutions and similar entities to access additional records of deceased persons.
UIDAI reiterated that Aadhaar numbers are never reassigned to another individual. However, deactivation is necessary to prevent misuse of a deceased person’s identity, particularly for accessing welfare benefits, subsidies or other entitlements.
The authority says the clean-up effort is intended to eliminate the risk of identity fraud or unauthorised transactions that could occur if dormant Aadhaar numbers remain active.
To streamline the process further, earlier this year, UIDAI launched a dedicated online facility—‘reporting of death of a family member’—on the myAadhaar portal. The service is currently available for deaths registered in 25 states and UTs whose civil registration systems are already integrated with the platform. Integration with the remaining states and UTs is in progress.
To report a death, a family member must authenticate their own identity and provide details such as the deceased person’s Aadhaar number, death registration number and other demographic information. UIDAI undertakes a validation process before deciding on deactivation.
In April 2023, the Union government had admitted before the Lok Sabha that around 6% of all Aadhaar-holders—
over 60 million—were dead, and UIDAI had no way of knowing. At that time, the government estimated that living persons held 1,302mn of the 1,360mn Aadhaar numbers issued. This was based not on hard data but on approximations and projections. The only way UIDAI estimated death was by adjusting Aadhaar numbers against India’s total projected population.
The inherent problem lies in the design of the Aadhaar system itself. Unlike voter rolls, which routinely remove names of the deceased through regular ground-level verifications, Aadhaar was built as a static, once-issued-forever-valid identity — without exit provisions. Until recently, there was no provision to deactivate the Aadhaar number of a deceased person and UIDAI had no coordination with state registrars who maintain birth and death records under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act.
When member of Parliament (MP) Adoor Prakash raised this issue in Parliament in 2023, the then minister of state for electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, acknowledged the absence of such a mechanism. He stated that UIDAI had only 'apprised' the registrar general of India about capturing Aadhaar numbers at the time of issuing death certificates, implying that no system was in place — only suggestions were made.
Despite being pitched as a foolproof, tech-driven backbone for public welfare and financial services, Aadhaar’s administrative inertia has repeatedly come under fire. From wrongful exclusions of the living in welfare distribution to duplication and errors in biometric matching, the system’s structural shortcomings continue to pile up.
The deactivation of over 20mn Aadhaar numbers now, while necessary, is not a success story — it is a confession of long-standing neglect. The very need for such a bulk exercise reveals that UIDAI has spent years inflating its own database with ghost identities, resulting in questionable statistics and misallocation of resources.
Last year in July, after 'due validation', UIDAI changed the status of 11.7mn Aadhaar numbers to non-active from active. The exercise is said to be ongoing in other non-civil registration system (CRS) states, with only 670,000 death records it received at that time.
While the numbers sound impressive, they underscore a troubling truth: for more than a decade, UIDAI had no mechanism in place to detect or disable Aadhaar numbers issued to people who had died. This glaring gap allowed these identities to remain active, potentially enabling misuse, identity fraud and duplication across welfare schemes and databases.
The Aadhaar database’s credibility issue becomes even starker when one examines the data on Aadhaar saturation by state. According to official figures, several states and UTs have assigned more Aadhaar numbers than their projected populations, revealing widespread over-registration, duplication, or lack of data validation.
An analysis of the
Aadhaar saturation dataset available on UIDAI's website reveals that 17 states and UTs have issued more Aadhaar numbers than their estimated populations — a phenomenon the UIDAI attributes to factors such as inter-state migration, enrolments of residents earlier counted elsewhere and demographic data variances.
Notably high saturation levels appear in northern India. Punjab reports 112% saturation with 33.6mn Aadhaar numbers, while Haryana reaches 115% with 31.8mn enrolments. The national capital territory (NCT) of Delhi records the highest saturation in the country at 133%, with 24.6mn Aadhaar numbers generated — reflecting large inflows of migrants and floating populations using Aadhaar as proof of identity.
Several states exceed national averages significantly. Gujarat has issued 69.0mn Aadhaar numbers, reaching 107% saturation, while Telangana has touched 108% with 41.9mn Aadhaar IDs.
Maharashtra and West Bengal both show saturation levels of 104%, with 127.1mn and 102.5mn Aadhaar numbers generated respectively. In southern India, Tamil Nadu records 102% saturation with 78.4mn Aadhaar-holders, while Karnataka stands at 103% with 68.6mn issued numbers. Andhra Pradesh has a saturation level of 105% with 55.8mn enrolments.
Odisha shows 102% saturation with 46.7mn Aadhaar enrolments and Jharkhand matches this level with 38.6mn numbers.
Several smaller states and UTs also exceed 100% saturation. Uttarakhand stands at 109% (12.1mn), Goa at 113% (2.2mn), Tripura at 111% (4.2mn), Puducherry at 102% (1.5mn), and Arunachal Pradesh at 103% (1.7mn). The data also shows Chandigarh, Nagaland, Manipur and Sikkim with saturation levels between 107% and 113%, indicating similar demographic and enrolment patterns.
