Last month, Reuters reported that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – a statutory authority under the Indian government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) – had privately proposed in January that smartphone makers be required to pre-install its Aadhaar app on their devices. Now, Reuters reports that the Indian government has dropped the proposal following security and cost concerns raised by the smartphone brands.
The Aadhaar app contains the Aadhaar card details of an Indian resident, including a 12-digit unique identification number, birth date, residential address, and is tied to the individual’s fingerprints and iris scans. UIDAI has generated over 1.44 billion Aadhaar numbers for Indian residents until now, and they are widely used for verification purposes in banking, telecom, and other services.
India’s IT ministry consulted with stakeholders from the electronics industry and rejected UIDAI’s proposal to mandate the pre-installation of the Aadhaar app on smartphones. The ministry said that it “is not in favour of mandating the pre-installation of the Aadhaar App on smartphones” without specifying the reason.
Smartphone makers raised security and safety concerns about this proposal to pre-load the Aadhaar app, as UIDAI and the Indian government have been in hot water multiple times in the past over security breaches and data leaks.
Moreover, pre-loading the Aadhaar app on smartphones would increase production costs for phone makers, as they would need to run separate manufacturing lines for India and the markets to which they export their smartphones.
Reuters reports that the request for pre-installation of the Aadhaar app was the sixth time in two years the Indian government sought pre-installation of state-owned apps on mobile phones.
Last December, the Indian government’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) privately asked smartphone makers to pre-load all new devices sold in India with its cyber safety app, Sanchar Sathi. The same order had also asked the phone makers to push the app via software updates to devices already sold in India. Following strong criticism and backlash, the Indian government rolled back the order within days.
A senior Indian official told Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that the IT ministry isn’t in favor of pre-installing apps “unless it is considered very essential.”
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