India’s IT ministry has rejected a proposal that would have required Apple, Samsung, and other smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the Aadhaar app on devices sold in India, according to officials briefed on the decision. The original proposal came from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in January 2026 and would have applied to all handsets manufactured for or sold in the Indian market.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) ruled against the mandate following consultation with device makers, who raised concerns about device security, software compatibility across OEM skins, the operational cost of maintaining separate manufacturing lines for domestic versus export SKUs, and a higher bill of materials. A senior official said MeitY’s position is that preloading applications onto handsets should not be mandated unless considered very essential.
The reversal marks the sixth unsuccessful preload attempt in approximately two years. The Department of Telecommunications ordered OEMs to preload the Sanchar Saathi anti-theft and anti-fraud app in November 2025 before withdrawing the order in December 2025 following similar industry pushback. The Aadhaar app itself remains available as an optional download on the Apple App Store and Google Play, and UIDAI continues to promote it as the primary channel for self-service Aadhaar interactions.
The Aadhaar app is the mobile interface to the world’s largest biometric ID database, which covers more than 1.3 billion enrolled individuals. The app handles credential presentation, offline QR generation, biometric locking, and linkages to DigiLocker and UPI, and has been central to UIDAI’s push to move Aadhaar interactions off physical card copies and into device-native flows.
The preload proposal reflected a longer-running policy tension between UIDAI’s interest in deeper device-level footprint and OEMs’ resistance to government-mandated app installations. Preinstalled apps typically cannot be uninstalled by end users, which shifts the platform burden to device makers and raises questions about app provenance, update cadence, and data handling that OEMs have preferred to handle through curated rather than mandated channels.
UIDAI has been steadily expanding Aadhaar’s mobile footprint through other channels. The authority has been waiving biometric update fees for children to boost enrollment freshness, and has continued to integrate Aadhaar authentication into India’s broader digital public infrastructure stack. The preload path is now closed, but organic app adoption remains UIDAI’s primary lever for growing device-level usage.
Sources: Moneycontrol, Reuters
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By Ali Nassar-Smith
