Two of India’s largest states have moved to limit how Aadhaar is used in civil registration and official documentation, with Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra both issuing orders that bar the national digital ID from being used as proof of birth or as a standalone proof of date of birth.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Planning Department has circulated a directive, signed by Special Secretary Amit Singh Bansal on November 24, instructing all government departments to stop accepting Aadhaar as a birth certificate or date-of-birth proof in any context. The order explicitly cites an October 31 letter from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which clarified that Aadhaar is an identity document and that the date of birth recorded in it is not, by itself, a verified birth record.
Maharashtra has gone further by tying the clarification to an enforcement drive targeting fraudulent certificates. State Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule has said that all birth certificates issued solely on the basis of Aadhaar after the August 11, 2023 amendment to the Births and Deaths Registration Act will be cancelled. The Revenue Department has issued a 16-point verification guideline to local officials, and the government has signalled that suspicious birth and death certificates based only on Aadhaar may trigger police complaints and, in some cases, declarations that individuals are absconding if they do not surrender bogus documents.
National and financial press reports note that both states’ moves explicitly align with UIDAI’s position that Aadhaar is meant to establish identity, not to function as a substitute for foundational civil records like birth certificates. UIDAI’s own documentation explains that the date of birth in Aadhaar may be marked as "declared" or "approximate" unless a separate, valid proof of birth is provided, and that only when such a document is submitted can the date of birth be marked as "verified".
For residents, the immediate impact is that they must rely on municipal or hospital birth certificates, school records, or other recognized documents when proof of birth or age is required, including for education, government benefits and some financial services. For relying parties such as banks, insurers and fintechs, the change underscores that Aadhaar alone is not sufficient for age-based eligibility checks or birth verification, even though it remains central to KYC, e-KYC and authentication flows.
Service providers that have been informally treating Aadhaar as a catch-all document will likely need to revise onboarding procedures and documentation policies to ensure they collect and retain appropriate proof-of-birth records alongside Aadhaar-based identity checks. India has been rapidly expanding Aadhaar use cases, including requiring it for new PAN tax cards, enabling biometric UPI payments, and mandating it for new mobile SIM cards.
The clampdown in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra also highlights a broader tension in India’s digital public infrastructure: Aadhaar’s ubiquity and convenience have invited use cases that go beyond what its issuer formally endorses. These new state-level orders reinforce the boundary between digital identity and civil registration, clarifying that while Aadhaar can anchor online identity, it cannot replace the underlying registries that establish a person’s birth, age and related rights.
Sources: Times of India, Times of India, Times of India, New Indian Express, Financial Express, UIDAI
—
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
