The Assam government on Thursday said that it will stop issuing Aadhaar cards to adults in the state to curb the fraudulent enrolment of “infiltrators”.

However, the restriction will not apply to members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and tea garden communities for a window of one year.

Aadhaar is a unique 12-digit identity number issued to residents of India by a statutory body, the Unique Identification Authority of India.

In a press release, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s Public Relations Cell said that the state Cabinet had earlier in the day approved the implementation of a revised Standard Operating Procedure for Aadhaar enrolments in the state.

“The SOP is required to ensure that no infiltrators from across the border may get Aadhaar fraudulently,” the release said. “District Commissioners are authorised for allowing Aadhaar enrolment for citizens above 18 years of age in rarest of rare cases.”

The release added that the restriction would not apply for one year to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and tea garden communities, adding that the process for their enrolment for Aadhaars would be completed within that period.

Later in the day, Sarma told reporters that any individuals outside these groups who were yet to receive Aadhaar could apply for it by September. “We will keep a one-month window open for this purpose,” the Bharatiya Janata Party leader told reporters.

“After the deadline, if someone applies in the rarest of rare cases, the SDC or circle officer will not be able to issue it,” he said. “Only the district commissioner will have that authority. Before issuing Aadhaar, the DC must obtain SB report and foreigners tribunals report.”

The chief minister said this restriction would become operational from October 1, The Indian Express reported.

He added that Assam’s Aadhaar saturation stood at 103% but was 96% among the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and tea garden communities.

“This means that no citizen above 18 years of age is left without Aadhaar, except from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and tea garden communities,” the BJP leader said. “Everyone else has already received the document.”

Sarma added that the state government had “continuously pushed back” Bangladeshi nationals along the border, ANI reported.

“We want to take protection that no one can obtain Aadhaar card from Assam by entering into the state and claiming to be an Indian citizen,” he said. “We have completely closed that way.”

The notification comes amid several persons in the country being forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

The matter is being heard by the Supreme Court on a petition filed by the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Board.

In September 2024, Sarma had also announced that the process of issuing Aadhaar numbers would henceforth be “strictly regulated in Assam”.

“Only applicants who applied [to be included in] NRC [National Register of Citizens] can procure Aadhaar, irrespective of whether they made it to the NRC or not,” he had said. “This will make sure that no suspected foreigners can access Aadhaar cards in Assam and it will stop the influx of illegal foreigners.”

The NRC was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

However, lawyers and activists had told Scroll that the Assam government did not have the power to make the NRC a condition for Aadhaar.

Also read: Can the Assam chief minister make NRC a condition for Aadhaar?

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