By Munsif Vengattil, Aditya Kalra and Shivangi Acharya
NEW DELHI, April 17 (Reuters) - India's government has decided not to go ahead with a proposal to require Apple, Samsung and others to pre-install
the country's biometric identification app Aadhaar on phones, a state body said on Friday, a move that had been opposed by the smartphone giants.
Reuters reported last month that UIDAI, the state body that operates Aadhaar, had asked the IT ministry in January to engage with Apple, Google and other leading smartphone makers to consider mandatory pre-installation of the Aadhaar app. A unique 12-digit identity number tied to an individual's fingerprints and iris scans, Aadhaar is held by nearly 1.34 billion residents and is widely used for verification purposes in banking and telecom services, as well as for faster airport entry.
India's IT ministry reviewed the proposal and "is not in favour of mandating the pre-installation of the Aadhaar App on smartphones," UIDAI said in a statement to Reuters on Friday.
It gave no reason for the decision in the statement. India's IT ministry did not respond to Reuters queries.
The IT ministry held a "consultation with stakeholders from the electronics industry" before reaching its decision to drop the Aadhaar preloading proposal, UIDAI said in its statement.
The Aadhaar request was the sixth time in two years the government has sought pre-installation of state apps on phones, according to industry communications reviewed by Reuters earlier this year. All six attempts were opposed by the industry.
Smartphone makers flagged concerns about device security and compatibility when they received the Aadhaar preload proposal, and also flagged higher production costs as they would have been required to run separate manufacturing lines for India and export markets, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
Apple and Samsung in particular both had concerns with the proposal due to questions over safety and security, sources told Reuters in March.
The government's decision not to proceed with the proposal shows the constraints on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's digital push as India courts firms like Apple to expand its role as a global smartphone hub. In December, India faced criticism over an order mandating smartphone firms to pre-install a telecom security app, forcing a rollback within days.
A senior Indian official said on Friday, on condition of anonymity, that the IT ministry is not supportive of any preloading of apps, "unless it is considered very essential."
SAFETY CONCERNS
While the government maintains Aadhaar is safe and secure, the app has faced persistent criticism from privacy advocates, including for data leaks where personal details of millions of holders surfaced on the dark web.
Apar Gupta, founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based digital advocacy group, welcomed the government's decision to drop the Aadhaar pre-installation proposal, and said other such proposals should also be spiked as they lack legislative foundation and have no public policy goal.
"Hopefully it is a welcome exercise of regulatory restraint that recognises that citizens carry their phones as extensions of their autonomy, not as vessels for government order," Gupta said.
(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra; Editing by Susan Fenton)
