The Supreme Court of India has clear and firm in its stance that Aadhaar, while a key identity document, cannot be accepted as the sole proof of citizenship. This ruling comes amid disputes over electoral roll revisions in Bihar, where a significant number of names were removed on grounds of doubtful citizenship.

The court rejected political parties’ pleas urging the Election Commission (EC) to accept Aadhaar as a standalone document to prove citizenship during voter registration. The verdict reiterates that Aadhaar’s legal status is governed by the Aadhaar Act and judicial precedents, which restrict its use strictly to identity verification and exclude citizenship confirmation.

The Supreme Court’s Reasoning on Aadhaar and Citizenship

The court referred to Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, which explicitly states that the Aadhaar number or its authentication “shall not, by itself, confer any right of, or be proof of, citizenship or domicile.” The 2018 landmark Puttaswamy judgment, delivered by a five-judge Supreme Court bench, clarified that Aadhaar is a proof of identity and residence, but it does not confer citizenship rights. As such, Aadhaar remains one of the many documents that can be used for identity verification but not the ultimate proof for establishing Indian citizenship.

The bench, consisting of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, asked why there was so much insistence on elevating Aadhaar to final proof of citizenship. The election process requires more than just biometric identification; it needs verification through proper legal and documentary evidence, which Aadhaar alone cannot provide. The Election Commission’s position—that Aadhaar is only one among several documents accepted for voter verification—was endorsed by the court.

Electoral Roll Revision in Bihar and Its Implications

The context of this ruling is the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in Bihar, where 65 lakh names were deleted from the draft list due to suspected irregularities in citizenship claims. Political parties, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), challenged the deletion and sought the court’s intervention to accept Aadhaar as enough proof to reinstate voter names. However, senior advocates representing the Election Commission highlighted problems like Aadhaar saturation exceeding 100% in some districts, indicating fake or duplicate cards, sometimes obtained fraudulently by illegal migrants.

The court advised political parties to engage more actively with grassroots-level workers and booth-level officers to identify and help genuine voters wrongly excluded from the list. This approach supports transparent electoral rolls that uphold the constitutional mandate that only Indian citizens can vote, thereby protecting the integrity of elections.

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