The SC suggested the government may consider Aadhaar as one of valid documents in Bihar voter roll exercise. Aadhaar is not a citizen ID, it continues to cause mass exclusions, privacy harms. There must be a clear separation between Aadhaar as a voluntary ID and it being a prerequisite to access any rights

Rethink Aadhaar notes the interim order of the Supreme Court of India on 10 July 2025 in the challenge(s) to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar announced by the Election Commission of India on 24.06.2025. 

However, we are dismayed that some Petitioners pressed for Aadhaar to be accepted as a valid proof of identity for the purpose of enrollment into the electoral rolls, despite its role in elections being the subject of a pending constitutional challenge in S.G. Vombatkere v. Union of India (W.P. (Civil) 848/2022). This approach relied on Section 23(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which permits Electoral Registration Officers to mandate Aadhaar for identity verification. 

Although biometric authentication is not being used in the current SIR, accepting Aadhaar as a supporting document creates the administrative and technical foundation for linking electoral rolls with the Aadhaar database in the future, including its use for biometric voter verification, as was experimented coincidentally in the recently conducted Municipal Elections in Bihar. 

Aadhaar’s widespread coverage has been driven by coercive, mandatory enrolment and forced use with little to no accountability across welfare and service systems. This creeping expansion has triggered mass deletions across multiple contexts, including in Assam where Aadhaar was weaponised through biometric freezes and NRC-linked exclusions, and in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh where electoral rolls saw large-scale deletions, and also raised grave concerns of surveillance, targeted voter profiling, and the erosion of the secret ballot. 

Rethink Aadhaar maintains that the electoral rolls must be completely de-linked with Aadhaar, an exclusionary, unreliable, leaking centralised database whose legal status remains unsettled. Further, that the guarantee of universal adult franchise flowing from Article 326 of the Indian Constitution must be based on a flexible, inclusive, and pluralistic approach to documentation, without privileging one form of identity. For more background, please see how Aadhaar-voter ID linking is an assault on free and fair elections.

Please write to contact@rethinkaadhaar.in  , laavanyatamang@gmail.com.