The Indian government quietly made a proposal in January that would see every new phone sold in the country come with the Aadhaar app already sitting on your Samsung phone’s home screen.

UIDAI, the body that runs Aadhaar, wanted the IT Ministry to pitch this to phonemakers. Samsung said no; so did Apple and Google. Samsung and Apple both flagged safety and security concerns when MAIT relayed the request to manufacturers.

These aren’t new worries, as the Sanchar Saathi app caused similar pushback in 2025. But this one’s actually more intrusive because Aadhaar isn’t some telecom fraud tracker. It’s a biometric identity system tied to over 1.34 billion people.

Here’s what UIDAI CEO Bhuvnesh Kumar said to justify it:

“underprivileged people who don’t have access to high-end mobile phones and cannot install apps that may occupy a lot of space on their devices” would benefit.

MAIT pointed out that forcing the app onto phones would require separate production lines for devices going to the Indian market. Reuters reported that MAIT told members the move wouldn’t serve a larger public purpose.

UIDAI’s new Aadhaar app dropped in January with face biometrics, liveness detection, age verification, and QR code sharing. Users can selectively share identity data and control consent instead of handing over full details.

It includes features like face authentication and biometric lock and unlock. The offline verification angle particularly makes sense for people in patchy connectivity zones. But utility doesn’t require mandatory preinstallation.

Reuters said the proposal was framed as a request, not an order. UIDAI’s official line after the story broke was that there’s no plan to make preinstallation mandatory, and MAIT characterized the whole thing as “preliminary exploration of ideas.”

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