This was the central change in the newly notified Telecommunications (User Identification) Rules, 2026 by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on August 21. The government dropped its plan to build a single, shared database – called the Biometric Identity Verification System (BIVS) – that would have assigned a unique ID to every user and let every telecom company check a customer’s identity against every other company’s records.
IFF had said that the new repository would have none of the safeguards on protection of information required under the Aadhaar Act, 2016.
Critiquing the BIVS system, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) in October 2025 had said it had been introduced “without any reasonable justification,” calling it a “parallel collection of biometric data by the DoT…in addition to that which is already being collected under the Aadhaar by UIDAI.
Entities must also report to government any instance of failure of biometric identification. Other changes to the final rules include an alert mechanism under rule 10, which would allow entities to send an alert to the user whenever a new connection/SIM/update/disconnection request is made in their name, asking them to confirm they made the request.
