If Aadhaar-based digital injustice, slavery and totalitarianism are not wrong, nothing is wrong.
The question—‘Are we all going to continue to give our consent to voluntary servitude to the beneficial owners of the automatic identification and biometric profiling machines, or will we confront the naturalisation of the politics of obedience?’—raises the oldest political questions about knowledge, authority, power and human dignity.
In his book The Politics Of Obedience: The Discourse Of Voluntary Servitude (1552-53), Etienne de La Boetie, the French jurist and a close friend of Montaigne, the noted French philosopher and a leading writer of the French Renaissance, wondered “how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred to put up with him rather than contradict him….”
The tyranny of promoters of the Aadhaar-based digital kingdom can be gauged from the fact that, as of 30 December 2025, the Good Governance portal of the ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY), the focal ministry for the unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) provides a list of 360 approved uses of Aadhaar authentication disregarding the fact that the constitutionality of Aadhaar Act itself is sub judice. The Aadhaar Authentication for Good Governance (Social Welfare, Innovation, Knowledge) Rules, 2020 were notified on 5 August 2020. In January 2025, MEITY revealed that nearly '550 entities are using Aadhaar authentication service'.
The Union government claimed that around 500 entities in the financial and telecom sectors have notified to use the Aadhaar number and numerous private and public service providers employing offline verification of the Aadhaar number for rendering services to individuals. Is the court tasked to close the stable door after the horses have bolted?
These promoters are presenting a fait accompli to the court, media, parties and citizens by making it appear to them that the Aadhaar Act and related acts of omission and commission are irreversible. It is increasingly emerging that Aadhaar-based digital despotism is pursuing a monstrous path by compelling and belittling even judges, legislators, chief ministers, Union ministers, armed forces, intelligence personnel and editors to undergo biometric-electronic profiling for Aadhaar number to get their salaries. They have been structurally coerced to undergo this ignominy even before the constitutionality of the Aadhaar Act has been decided.
In reply to a question by Kerala MP, Binoy Viswam, also a petitioner in the court, the minister of electronics and information technology had informed the Rajya Sabha on 29 July 2021 that as on 30 June 2021, a total of 312 schemes were notified by various Central ministries under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016. But now The Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2019 which used to permit authentication services under the provisions of any other law made by Parliament under inserted Section 4 was repealed after the enactment of The Repealing and Amending Act, 2023.
Prior to that The Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019 was promulgated in compliance with the directions of the Supreme Court which declared several provisions of the Aadhaar Act to be either unconstitutional or impermissible. During the period of the existence of the amended provisions of the Aadhaar Act, a list of 312 illustrative use-cases was given to the Rajya Sabha. But now that amended provisions of the Aadhaar Act have been repealed, there is a compelling reason to withdraw approval of the use of Aadhaar authentications from among 360 schemes and 550 entities.
In the aftermath of the repeal of the amendment Act, the requirement for Aadhaar number Section 142 of the Code on Social Security, 2020 which provides for use of Aadhaar for establishing identity of an employee or unorganised worker or any other person for registration as member or beneficiary for seeking benefit whether in kind, cash or medical sickness benefit or pension, gratuity or maternity benefit or any other benefit or withdrawal of fund or availing services of career centre or receiving any payment or medical attendance as an insured person himself or for his dependents, is impermissible.
Its requirement under Section 99B of the Customs Act, 1962 which provides for the authentication of a person whose verification is considered necessary for protecting the interest of revenue or for preventing smuggling, too is rendered impermissible. Section 25(6A), (6B) & (6C) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 provides for Aadhaar authentication of registered persons or for new registration is questionable.
In What is history? (1961), EH Carr, the author states: “If milk is set to boil in a saucepan, it boils over. I do not know, and have never wanted to know, why this happens; if pressed, I should probably attribute it to a propensity in milk to boil over, which is true enough but explains nothing.”
The anger against monstrous despotism of promoters and owners of automatic identification and biometric-electronic profiling digital firms is simmering. It is not clear as yet when it will boil over. These firms are making bigger mistakes and faster than human beings can. After the enactment of information technology laws, life-changing decisions by these firms and institutions deploying them have put communities to enormous risk. These technologies are facilitating bigger and faster mistakes and with less accountability because laws have not been able to keep pace with innovations.
By now it is crystal clear that laws are increasingly driven by donors of the ruling parties. While analogue bureaucracy of the traditional civil service can be made accountable and the process by which it reached a decision can also be traced, the working of digitised bureaucracy is generally non-transparent.
During 2005-2025, ignoring the recommendations of a study by London School of Economics against 'inappropriate' biometric national ID with 'capability to electronically trace and profile all' published in June 2005, the task force for the preparation of a policy document on identity and access management constituted in 2006 submitted a report that disclosed a project unique ID (UID) 'to create a central database of resident in the country'.
Its 34 members included representatives from technology solution-providers like: i. IBM, ii. Microsoft, iii. Oracle, iv. Computer Associates, v. Novell, vi. Honeywell, vii. HP, viii. Red Hat, ix. ILANTUS Technologies, x. MPhasis and xi. PwC besides other members from NIC, department of information technology (DIT), National Institute for Smart Government, ministry of commerce and industry's department of industrial policy and promotion (E-BizProject), standardisation testing and quality certification directorate, ECIL, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, department of administrative reforms and public grievances, Osmania University, IIT Kharagpur, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore and Society for Promotion of e-Governance in India.
The concept of UID was first discussed in 2006. The administrative approval for the project 'nique ID for BPL families' was given on 3 March 2006 by the department of information technology, ministry of communications & information technology during the tenure Dayanidhi Maran as the minister. The planning commission’s process committee led by Dr Arvind Virmani was formed on 3 July 2006 to suggest processes for the updating, modification, addition and deletion of data fields from core database under 'Unique ID for BPL families’ project.
The committee hired Wipro Ltd as its consultant. Wipro prepared a 14-page long "Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents" in July 2006 envisaging the close linkage that the UID Number with the electoral database. Another 15-page long Wipro document entitled "Does India need a Unique Identity Number?" cited the example of the UK's Identity Cards Act, 2006 to advance the argument for a biometric UID number.
After the UK abandoned its ID card project, Wipro chose to maintain its deafening silence. The comptroller auditor general (CAG) of India was misled to believe that it was DIT, not Wipro Ltd which submitted the “Strategic Vision – Unique Identification of Residents" to the process committee which approved a UID authority to be created by executive order. The process committee furnished a detailed proposal in this regard.
Notably, CAG was misled to ensure that it does not audit the conduct of the planning commission's process committee and Wipro Ltd, their consultant who has been accused of 'undue favours' in the UIDAI project by CAG. The report of the Dr SI Ahson-headed 34-member task force for the preparation of a policy document on identity and access management had revealed in April 2007 that the project unique ID (UID) is 'to create a central database of residents in the country'.
The provisions under Section 72A of the IT Act protect personal information from unlawful disclosure in breach of contract. Besides these provisions, Section 43A of the IT Act enables the Union government to frame the IT Rules which seek to provide individuals certain rights with regard to their information and ensure protection of sensitive personal data or information. The IT Rules make a distinction between personal information and sensitive personal data or information.
According to Rule 2 (1)(i), personal information is defined as that information which directly or indirectly relates to a person, “in combination with other information available or likely to be available with a body corporate, is capable of identifying such person.”
In comparison, Rule 3 fleshes out the composition of sensitive personal data or information which includes examples of sensitive information such as passwords, medical history, biometric information, sexual orientation, bank account details, physiological or mental health condition, etc.
Rule 5 of the IT Rules makes it mandatory for the data collector to seek consent in writing before collecting sensitive personal data or information and he is required to ensure that the collection is based on the principles of legality and necessity. The individual whose data is being collected should be made aware of the reason behind the collection of information and who would have access to such information under Rule 5.
The data collector is required to practice purpose limitations and is prevented from retaining the information forever. Rule 8 and Section 43A of the IT Act place civil liabilities on companies for mishandling sensitive personal data or information.
Notably, Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011 framed under Sections 87 (2) and 43A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 refers to biometric “technologies that measure and analyse human body characteristics, such as 'fingerprints', 'eye retinas and irises', 'voice patterns', ‘facial patterns', 'hand measurements' and 'DNA' for authentication purposes.”
It is apparent that the enactment of two e-commerce laws—the IT Act, 2000 and the Aadhaar Act, 2016—has been done without factoring in their deleterious implications for present and future citizens, their absolute fundamental right to privacy and data protection and national security.
The Aadhaar-based software applications are being pushed by e-commerce and platform economy czars who benefit from the monetisation of personal sensitive information which could be misused for indiscriminate profiling and mass surveillance using demographic, biometric and metadata. It has increased the vulnerability of the communities, migrants and their defenders who get profiled. Such profiling facilitates the emergence of a police state.
In this context, ‘profiling’ means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements. This kind of profiling has resulted in violence and discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, caste and class.
There are anecdotal oral narratives which reveal how existing databases like census and electoral database in the possession of the State have been leaked to facilitate the perpetrators of mass violence. Such violence is also aimed at the disruption of economic activities of the minorities, migrants and those who are portrayed to be of a different race, religion, region, ethnicity and beliefs. The resentment against the relative economic prosperity of those who are supposedly non-natives or risk groups gets manifested when their economic activities are subjected to both panoptic and synoptic gaze.
It is increasingly evident that unlimited surveillance is a decisive economic operator. The data collected through profiling is harming individuals, local businesses, employee and non-employee societies in particular, by keeping a permanent record about them. This is unfolding in a situation where the national legislature has failed to keep pace with the unprecedented speed of non-neutral technological innovations promoted by the beneficial owners of database and surveillance technology firms like promoters of the central identities data repository (CIDR) of all Aadhaar numbers.
A confidential document dated 13 November 2009 of UIDAI titled ‘Creating a unique identity number for every resident in India’, leaked by Wikileaks, reads: “One way to ensure that the unique identification (UID) number is used by all government and private agencies is by inserting it into the birth certificate of the infant. Since the birth certificate is the original identity document, it is likely that this number will then persist as the key identifier through the individual’s various life events, such as joining school, immunisations, voting, etc.”
The proponents of the world's biggest citizen identification scheme aims to converge the electoral photo identity card (EPIC) numbers of electoral database, the UID/Aadhaar number database called CIDR and the national population register (NPR). In their myopia, political parties and media in particular and citizens in general, have failed to fathom its ramifications for the secret ballot system and voting by electors in a democracy. It alters the relationship between the State and the citizen to the disadvantage of the latter.
Implanting Aadhaar Number in Labour Codes
The four labour codes—Code on Wages, 2019, Social Security Code, 2020, Industrial Relations Code 2020 and the Occupational Safety Code 2020—that were enacted in place of 29 laws have come into force in its entirety. Although they were notified in November 2025, only a few Sections (4-5) and sub-sections of the laws have been implemented so far.
The Social Security Code, which has 164 Sections, absorbed the nine previous laws on social security, which had 256 sections collectively. A careful study of the 164 Sections of the code revealed that almost half of the sections state that the government will make laws (on the matter which the section addresses) on a later occasion. The only Sections of the Code which have been implemented are Sections 15, 16, 142, 143 and 164. Even these are not implemented fully. Only Section 142 was enforced. Only a few sub-sections of the remaining sections have been implemented.
Section 142 states that the nine laws related to social security issues (like gratuity, provident fund, etc.) will only apply to those who link their Aadhaar number with the relevant portal. These nine laws were achieved after a prolonged struggle of the proletariat. By applying the pre-condition of Aadhaar number on 10 occasions in the Code, the government is taking away the fundamental rights of workers in lieu of some benefit and services and the gains of the workers’ struggle, which falls under the ambit of doctrine of unconstitutional provision.
Significantly, the Social Security Code, 2022, recognises 'gig workers' as a separate class of workers to whom it seeks to provide various benefits. According to the code, 'gig worker' means a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of traditional employer-employee relationship (Section 2 (35), Social Security Code, 2022). It also refers to 'platform worker' as a person engaged in or undertaking platform work (Section 2 (61), Social Security Code, 2022). The code refers to both of them on 25 occasions. It defines 'platform work' as “a work arrangement outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access other organisations or individuals to solve specific problems or to provide specific services or any such other activities which may be notified by the Central government, in exchange for payment” (Section 2 (60), Social Security Code, 2022).” Each state has to finalise regulations for its implementation.
In a related development, the Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023 has been enacted to regulate platform-based gig workers. This law ensures labour rights, social security, and welfare programmes for platform workers. It defines a 'gig worker' in article 2.e as "a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of traditional employer-employee relationship and who works on contract that results in a given rate of payment, based on terms and conditions laid down in such contract and includes all piece-rate work” (Section 2 (e), the Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023).”
According to this law, 'platform' means an online transaction based arrangement of work that may involve a person or persons providing goods and services and a person or persons receiving goods and services against a specified rate of payment (Section 2 (f), the Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023).
The Rajasthan law provides for the setting up of a welfare board and to set up a welfare fund for platform-based gig workers, to register platform-based gig workers and aggregators in the state and to facilitate the guarantee of social security to platform-based gig workers. But like the Social Security Code which makes the Unique ID/ Aadhaar number mandatory, the Rajasthan law makes provision for a 'Unique ID' means the unique number issued to a registered platform-based gig worker (Sections 2 (j), 8 (4), the Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023). The footprint of the digital ID cartel is visible even in the seemingly progressive Rajasthan law. It can help undertake profiling and tracking of workers to the detriment of his/her fundamental rights and dignity.
In violation of the spirit of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, Aadhaar linkage had already led to the cancellation of 10mn job cards and deletion of 70mn beneficiaries. Under know-your-customer (KYC) norms, another 2.7mn workers have been declared ineligible. Under the pretext of technology, employment exclusion has been legalised. Without drawing any lesson from the earlier mistakes, the Viksit Bharat—Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025, which repealed the MGNREGA refers to 'digital', stack and Aadhaar number on 45 occasions.
Now, biometric attendance twice a day, geo-tagged photographs of worksites, and compulsory digital uploads have been made statutory. GRAM G Act refers to 'Viksit Bharat National Rural Infrastructure Stack' which means the consolidated aggregation comprising proposed works emerging from the Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans aggregated at the district and state levels, and aligned with the four thematic domains of works specified in the Schedule (Section 2 (v), Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, 2025). It is apparent that one of world’s first rights-based employment guarantee law has been replaced with a controversial Aadhaar-based erratic employment law at the behest of the donors of the ruling parties.
Conclusion
The establishment of the UIDAI for issuance of 12-digit unique identification (UID)/Aadhaar numbers assigned to the residents of India in January 2009 and the enactment of Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits, and Services) Act, 2016, the second e-commerce law through a Money Bill has been detected to be constitutionally questionable by a five-Judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India.
The commercial czars who are benefiting from the Aadhaar number online database were brought to light in the CAG’s audit report on UIDAI's performance. But the government, which misled the Lok Sabha on 20 July 2022 about the action taken report, is now using the observations of Nobel laureate Paul Romer to defend the Aadhaar number project, unmindful of the fact that Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which enabled data transfer to private entities, has been declared unconstitutional and omitted from the Act!
It also disregards the fact that the case against Aadhaar law is pending before a seven-judge Constitution bench since 13 November 2019 pursuant to a decision of the 46th chief justice of India-led five-judge bench. But after the impeachment of Klara Sooronkulova, a judge at the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan who was drafting a decision declaring the 2014 law on biometric registration unconstitutional, seven judges of India’s Supreme Court have refrained from adjudicating the constitutionality of the Aadhaar Act.
Disregarding the Supreme Court’s stance with regard to the questionable nature of the Aadhaar number database project, the World Bank Group's eTransform initiative has been projecting the Aadhaar number in countries like Estonia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and others. Amid bitter opposition underway to the proposed national ID in UK, the UK prime minister's comments during his October 2025 visit to India in favour of the Aadhaar number database ignored the recommendations of the London School of Economics (LSE) against a centralised database which led to the repeal of the national ID programme of the Tony Blair era.
So far, the Supreme Court of India has failed to draw lessons from the notorious decision of the US Supreme Court in Dred Scott vs Sandford (1857) which led to the Civil War. The US Supreme Court, in a questionable decision written by chief justice Roger B Taney, had held that persons of African descent were not citizens of the USA. No Supreme Court decision has been more consistently reviled than the decision in Dred Scott vs Sandford.
Of all the repudiated decisions by the Supreme Courts of the world, this decision carries the deepest stigma. It became synonymous with the general public with ‘judges on a rampage’. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution rendered chief justice Taney’s entire opinion obsolete, in declaring that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States.”.
Unless the seven-judge Constitution bench upholds the findings of the five-judge Constitution bench in Rojer Mathew vs South Indian Bank Ltd & Ors (2019) and declares that all citizens of the Indian union of states have all the fundamental rights independent of Aadhaar number and those rights cannot be made dependent on Aadhaar number, the decision in KS Puttaswamy & Anr vs Union of India & Ors (2018) authored by justice AK Sikri declaring the Aadhaar Bill to be a Money Bill will be reviled and deemed the deepest stigma like the Supreme Court’s decision in ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla, (1976) which has been recognised by the court as a notorious decision worthy of “buried ten fathom deep, with no chance of resurrection.”
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(Dr Gopal Krishna is a lawyer and a researcher of philosophy and law. His current work is focused on the philosophy of digital totalitarianism and the monetisation of nature. He has appeared before the Supreme Court's Committees, Parliamentary Committees of Europe, Germany and India and UN agencies on the subject of national and international legislation. He is the co-founder of the East India Research Council (EIRC). He is the convener of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) which has been campaigning for freedom from UID/Aadhaar/NPR and DNA profiling through criminal identification procedures since 2010. He had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that questioned and trashed the biometric identification of Indians through UID/Aadhaar Number. He is an ex-Fellow, Berlin-based International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter Strategies (IRGAC). He is also the editor of www.toxicswatch.org.)
