The Government recently claimed in the Supreme Court that 118 crore Indians would be hurt if the Court passed an order against Aadhaar. What this claims ignores is that people have been coerced to enroll for and “seed” or link Aadhaar to various schemes. The consequences of such coercion are terrible - the death of 11-year old Santoshi Kumari from starvation in Jharkhand, for instance, after the local ration dealer cancelled her family’s ration card for not “seeding” (or linking) it with their Aadhaar number. Every single day, we receive e-mails and SMS messages from banks and mobile service companies demanding we link Aadhaar or have our account frozen/suspended!

Government's false stand in court on Aadhaar have spurred new Opt Out, Delink Aadhaar campaigns, calling the bluff on the government’s claim.

The claim ignores the repeated coercion thanks to which these 118 crore Indians have an Aadhaar. Many such citizens are now demanding to opt out of the Aadhaar ecosystem or delink their Aadhaar from various services Within five days of its launch, over 1,200 people in Meghalaya alone have signed a petition asking to opt out of Aadhaar altogether Rethink Aadhaar’s “Delink Aadhaar” campaign, similar to the campaign in Meghalaya, has received more than 2,300 responses from people wanting to either delink their Aadhaar or opt-out of Aadhaar altogether Calls for opting-out on Twitter alone have been seen more than two lakh times, and have gathered more than 8000 engagements in the past month Two online petitions, one demanding that mandatory linking of Aadhaar be stopped, and the one asking people to Say No to Aadhaar, have together received over 1,100 signatures Last but not least, the government’s claim ignores the dangers of a single ID with dubious security measures, now being widely exposed

The claims with respect to support for Aadhaar is similar to the government repeatedly making highly overstated claims about savings from welfare programs linked to Aadhaar, repeatedly exposed by independent researchers. Some examples of the problems faced since Aadhaar linking began: