The latest Aadhaar Good Governance Rules notified in August 2020 legitimize function creep of the Aadhaar programme by allowing Aadhaar authentication for usage of digital platforms to ensure good governance, prevention of dissipation of social welfare benefits, and enablement of innovation and the spread of knowledge. These Rules come on the heels of amendements to the Aadhaar Act in 2019 which authorized use of Aadhaar by private parties, and these amendments have been challenged before the Supreme Court for violating the judgement in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India- Aadhaar 5J. The cummulative impact of the Aadhaar Amendment Act 2019 and the Aadhaar Good Governance Rules 2020 is that there remain virtually no limitations on the use of Aadhaar authentication, which had earlier been restricted by the Supreme Court to only government entities and only for receipt of benefits and subsidies funded by the Consolidated Fund of India.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/aadhaar-good-governance-rules/