The Unique Identification Authority of India vide its notification dated 2nd March 2022 has published the Aadhaar (Enrolment and Update) (Ninth Amendment) Regulations, 2022 which shall come into force with effect from 1st January 2023.
The Amendment is brought under regulation 28(1) which deals with cases requiring deactivation of aadhar number in which the following sub-clause has been inserted as follows:
28(1)(e) Where a child having attained the age of five or fifteen years of age fails to update his biometric information within two years of attaining such age, his Aadhaar number shall be deactivated. In cases where such update has not been carried out at the expiry of one year after deactivation, the Aadhaar number shall be omitted.
E (i) Where an Aadhaar number holder has attained the age of 5 or 15 years, the first update in his/her Aadhaar has to be necessarily accompanied by a biometric information update.
(ii) Where an Aadhaar number holder who has attained the age of 5 or 15 years fails to update his/her biometric information within 2 years of attaining such age, his/her Aadhaar number shall be deactivated. The facility of biometric information update shall be available free of cost to the Aadhaar number holder till attaining the age of 7 or 17 years, respectively. Thereafter, the Aadhaar number holder can activate his/her Aadhaar number by updating his/her biometric information. However, the applicable charges for biometric information update as fixed by the Authority from time to time shall be borne by the Aadhaar number holder.
(iii) The Aadhaar number shall not be omitted even if the Aadhaar number holder does not update biometric information, and the Aadhaar number shall remain in deactivated state.
Further under regulation 29, if any case reported or identified as a possible case requiring omission or deactivation may require field inquiry which may include hearing the persons whose Aadhaar number is sought to be omitted or deactivated.
“Provided that no such inquiry shall be required in case of deactivation of the Aadhaar number of a child for the want of mandatory biometric information update as per the Regulation 28(1)(e)”
