A cluster of recent Indian tenders is drawing a sharp line between Aadhaar-based and non-Aadhaar-based biometric attendance systems, offering a window into how public bodies are navigating identity, infrastructure and privacy trade-offs.
On the non-Aadhaar side, multiple procurements point to strong demand for biometric attendance systems that deliberately avoid Aadhaar as the underlying identifier. A new tender from Visva-Bharati Santiniketan in Birbhum, West Bengal, calls for a Non-Aadhaar Based Biometric Attendance System (Q2) with a quantity of 75 devices and a submission deadline of December 17, 2025. The tender is issued under the Ministry of Education and categorized under attendance systems and biometric machines, suggesting a campus-wide deployment aimed at tightening staff or student attendance monitoring without linking records to the national ID database.
Other non-Aadhaar attendance contracts appear across several states. Recent listings include a Department of Science and Technology (DST) tender in Gujarat for supply, installation, commissioning and operation of infrastructure for non-Aadhaar based biometric attendance system (2 Qty) with electromagnetic lock system, and aggregator entries for supply of non-Aadhaar-based biometric attendance systems in Maharashtra and multi-city deployments. Together, these show a clear market segment for organizations that want biometric time-and-attendance but prefer to keep the credentialing layer local, whether for policy, union, or data-governance reasons.
In contrast, another set of contracts and policy moves leans into the Aadhaar ecosystem. Tender aggregators list multiple Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS) procurements, covering devices and services for public bodies in states such as West Bengal, Haryana, Maharashtra and others. These deployments typically tie attendance directly to Aadhaar numbers, with devices and software integrated into the NIC-backed AEBAS platform.
At the state policy level, Chhattisgarh has recently mandated Aadhaar-enabled biometric attendance for senior officials at the Mahanadi Bhavan state secretariat in Nava Raipur. Under the directive, officials at the rank of Under Secretary and above must record attendance twice daily using Aadhaar-linked fingerprint or facial authentication, with plans to roll the system out to directorates and district-level offices in subsequent phases. The policy explicitly aims to address tardiness, improve transparency and create a consistent data trail that can be used for monitoring and payroll.
Running alongside these deployments is an RFP from the Chhattisgarh Infotech Promotion Society (CHiPS) titled selection of agency for development, implementation, operation and maintenance of Aadhaar and its allied service. While not restricted to attendance alone, the project indicates that the state is building a broader delivery stack around Aadhaar that could underpin multiple services, including authentication, e-governance workflows and citizen-facing portals.
For those who’ve been following Aadhaar’s development over the years, a fascinating juxtaposition appears to be emerging. On one side, there is a steady stream of AEBAS tenders and state-level directives that treat Aadhaar as the default scaffold for identity and attendance. On the other, a growing list of non-Aadhaar based biometric attendance system tenders shows institutional appetite for alternatives that keep biometric templates and identity data within an organization’s own systems.
Vendors will need to decide where they position themselves on this spectrum. Those closely aligned with Aadhaar will find opportunities in large, centrally-orchestrated rollouts and policy-driven mandates. Providers of device-agnostic or privacy-preserving attendance platforms may find traction with universities, public-sector enterprises and departments that want biometric assurance without fully committing to Aadhaar as the primary key. Either way, the current tender landscape makes clear that biometric attendance in India is no longer a single, Aadhaar-dominated story, but a contested space where architecture and governance choices are up for negotiation.
Sources: TenderDekho, DST Gujarat, TenderNews, TDR ImImg, ClassicTenders, DGMarket, TenderDetail, Times of India
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
