[21][22] A five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court heard various cases relating to the validity of Aadhaar[23] on various grounds including privacy, surveillance, and exclusion from welfare benefits.

[24] On 9 January 2017 the five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India reserved its judgement on the interim relief sought by petitions to extend the deadline making Aadhaar mandatory for everything from bank accounts to mobile services.

The UIDAI data centre is located at the Industrial Model Township (IMT), Manesar,[38] which was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister of Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda on 7 January 2013.

[41] In a notification dated 16 December 2010 the Government of India indicated that it would recognise a letter issued by the UIDAI containing details of name, address, and Aadhaar number as an official, valid document.

It primarily aimed to provide various rights to persons of Indian origin,[59] but the bill also introduced Clause 14 (a) that said: "The Central Government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and issue national identity card to him.

[67] On 3 November 2011 Former Supreme Court judge V R Krishna Iyer released a book "Aadhaar; How a Nation is Deceived",[68] in Kochi by handing over the first copy to Dr. Sebastian Paul.

Speaking on the occasion Justice V R Krishna Iyer said that "the project AADHAAR should not be implemented for it amounts to an assault on privacy and basic rights of individuals and is suited only for fascist nations.

[74] In December 2011 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, led by Yashwant Sinha, rejected the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 and suggested modifications.

[16][76][77] In late September 2013, following the Supreme Court verdict, Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Planning, Rajeev Shukla, said that it would attempt to pass the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010 in the winter session of the Parliament.

[88] On 10 September 2014, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave approval to Phase V of the UIDAI project, starting the enrolment process in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Uttarakhand.

"[91] In March 2015 the Aadhaar-linked DigiLocker service was launched, using which Aadhaar-holders can scan and save their documents on the cloud, and can share them with government officials whenever required without any need to carry them.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, an INC leader, wrote in a letter to Jaitley that the ruling party, the BJP, was attempting to bypass the Rajya Sabha, as they did not have the majority in the upper house.

[127] In July 2015 the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) called a meeting of various matrimonial sites and other stakeholders discuss the use of Aadhaar to prevent fake profiles and protect women from exploitation.

[137] In 2020, UIDAI introduced a new physical Aadhaar card made of PVC with additional security features such as holograms, micro text, ghost images, guilloché Patterns, invisible logos etc.

[53] In March 2011 Rajanish Dass of IIM Ahmedabad's Computer and Information Systems Group published a paper titled "Unique Identity Project in India: A divine dream or a miscalculated heroism".

[161][162][163] A five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court has heard various cases relating to the validity of Aadhaar on various grounds including privacy, surveillance, and exclusion from welfare benefits.

The High Court rejected the argument and on 26 February 2014 in an interim order directed Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) to study the technological capability of the database to see if it could solve such a crime.

[176] In an August 2009 interview with the Tehelka, former chief of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Ajit Doval, said that Aadhaar was originally intended to flush out illegal immigrants, but social security benefits were later added to avoid privacy concerns.

[177] In December 2011 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, led by Yashwant Sinha, rejected the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, and suggested modifications.

[181] In September 2023, independent analyst Moody raised concerns about the Aadhaar system, highlighting its tendency to result in service denials, especially affecting manual labourers in hot, humid climates due to questionable reliability of biometric technologies.

[194] The digital document itself is self-signed by a non-internationally recognised certificate authority (n)Code Solutions, a division of Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Company Ltd (GNFC)[195] and needs to be manually installed on the PC.

[199] Many private and public benefits are being linked to Aadhaar numbers and made contingent on it: food aid, cooking-gas subsidies, mobile connections, NREGA wages, government examinations, banking facilities, tax filings, etc.

[203] Non-resident Indians, overseas citizens of India, and other resident foreigners may also find it difficult to avail themselves of services they could previously freely obtain, such as local SIM cards,[204] despite assurances to the contrary.

[205] Since the Unique Identification Authority office first opened in Delhi, people have been allowed to designate their gender as "transgender" on their Aadhaar card, according to an August 2013 report.

[224] The complex structure of ownership is detailed in an article in Fountainink.in[225] Concerns were raised as early as 2011 in the Sunday Guardian regarding not following due process and handing over contracts to entities with links to the FBI and having a history of leaking data across countries.

[230] The Centre for Internet and Society, a non-profit research organisation from India, reported that during 2017, the Aadhaar of 130 million people was leaked as a result of information exposed on websites relating to four government social security schemes.

[235] On 5 January 2018, media correspondents from The Tribune reported that they were, by posing as buyers, able to gain administrator access to the entire Aadhaar database for a payment of ₹500 (US$5.80), revealing major security flaws.

[236] Acknowledging this data breach, the Unique Identification Authority of India suspended 5000 officials from accessing the database after an investigation revealed misuse and unauthorised usage.

American security website ZDNet reported that they spent a month attempting to contact the National Informatics Centre, the UIDAI, and Indian consulate officials in the United States, but did not receive a response before they ran the story.

Yet another problem is that such a linkage would assign Aadhaar's demographic information to an electoral database leading to misuse for profiling of voters, and India's lack of data protection laws makes it even worse.