India drops proposal to mandate national ID app Aadhaar on smartphones after pushback

India’s government has decided not to go ahead with a proposal ‌to require Apple, Samsung and others to pre-install the country’s biometric identification ​app Aadhaar on phones, a state body said on Friday, a move ⁠that had been opposed by the smartphone giants.

Reuters reported last month that UIDAI, the state body that operates Aadhaar, had asked the IT ministry in January to engage with Apple, Google and other leading ‌smartphone makers to consider mandatory pre-installation of the Aadhaar app. A unique 12-digit identity number tied to an individual’s fingerprints and iris scans, Aadhaar is held ‌by nearly 1.34 billion residents and is widely used for verification purposes in banking and ‌telecom ⁠services, as well as for faster airport entry.