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Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (“APAAR”) is an Aadhaar-based unique ID project for students across India initiated in July 2023 and declared a ‘digital public infrastructure’ earlier this year. States and UTs across India have passed directions to start enrolling students to the programme based on their Aadhaar cards and hold special parent-teacher meetings to seek parental consent for the same. As the project evolves, it seems to be voluntary on paper but mandatory in practice. This may be easily clarified from the law/policy document operationalising the IDs—but there is none. Every time we asked for APAAR’s policy documents, nodal Ministries stonewalled information, stated that they were ‘working on it’, played the blame game with other departments, and transferred our RTI request internally 30+ times (and counting). We still do not have an answer. This post unpacks what this means for student privacy and autonomy.
- IFF’s post on APAAR ID dated May 01, 2024 (link)
- IFF’s post on APAAR ID dated October 27, 2023 (link)
- IFF’s Letter to the Ministry of Education on the APAAR ID (link)
- BJP’s 2024 Election Manifesto (link)
- Ministry of Education’s Thematic Session on NCrF and APAAR (Powerpoint Presentation) (link)
- Ministry of Education’s Thematic Session on NCrF and APAAR (Final Report) (link)
Back in July 2023, the Ministry of Education (“MoE”) in conjunction with the Ministry of Electronics and IT (“MeitY”) introduced a ‘one student, one unique ID’ scheme comprising the APAAR framework through a panel discussion on the implementation of the 2020 National Education Policy (“NEP 2020”) with an objective to issue unique IDs to students based on their Aadhaar number and store life-long longitudinal records of their educational scores, achievements, and related statistics, against it.
The enrollment process began in October 2023, when MoE wrote to state chief secretaries asking schools to persuade students into creating APAAR IDs, which will be based on and authenticated through their Aadhaars. We could not find a copy of this missive through public portals, but some schools have uploaded it to their websites and we have archived it here. In line with globally recognised legal principles, schools require parental consent to enrol students into the registry as the students are minors, i.e. under the age of 18. Thus the MoE Secretary, through the letter, also persuaded schools to hold a “special” parents’-teachers’ meetings “to get the consent of parents” to enrol their children into the APAAR framework.
Through all of this, and while APAAR enrollment was underway at breakneck speed across Indian schools, we noticed a glaring lack of guiding documents in the public domain and found that any and all directions issued under the project were uploaded by schools/parents, and not by the nodal Ministries. Thus we filed a host of Right to Information (RTI) requests with both authorities, which is traced in detail in a previous post. To summarise:
- We filed our first RTI on October 19, 2023 seeking a copy of the letter from the Department of School Education and Literacy, MoE (“DOSEL”) to all state chief secretaries and education commissioners for the creation of APAAR IDs, and received no response.
- We filed our second and third RTIs later in October with MoE asking about the status of the scheme, its backing law and/or policy documents, and other details of enrollment. We, again, received no response.
- We filed a fourth RTI with the DOSEL on November 2, 2023 asking the same questions again, and stressing on the law/policy document the authorities are using to implement the APAAR ID and framework. This time, we received a response on December 1, 2023, noting: “for implementation of APAAR, detailed plan covering all aspects such as framing up of policies, guidelines, criteria for empanelment of schools etc are under development stage.” Note that by this stage, about 2.2 Crore students had been enrolled for the APAAR ID without a law/policy in place.
- Then we filed a fifth RTI asking for the earlier order sent to chief secretaries, and finally received a copy.
- Not giving up yet, we filed a sixth RTI on December 28, 2023 with MoE, asking once again about the grounding law/policy for this initiative, only to receive the same response again: “for implementation of APAAR, detailed plan covering all aspects such as framing up of policies, guidelines, criteria for empanelment of schools etc are under development stage.”
- So we waited, and on February 16, 2024, made another attempt to get these questions answered, and received an interesting response. The RTI, which was transferred by the Education Department to Digital India Corporation, MeitY, read:
“[t]he Ministry of Education (MoE) will inform about the Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) and policy for creating/ verifying the APAAR IDs. However, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the implementing body, has developed the portal and follows the Data Privacy and Protection Act (DPDA). It is important to note that since students/ learners are minors (below 18 years of age), parental/ guardian consent is necessary for the authentication/ creation of the APAAR ID.”
The RTI first revealed that MeitY was in fact a collaborator on the APAAR project (and had a mystery legislation ‘Data Privacy and Protection Act’?). It also signalled that 1) APAAR ID is being aggressively implemented without any law or policy written down to back it, which as we argued in our previous post makes the framework unconstitutional, and 2) the Ministries are simply shedding all accountability when it comes to questions about privacy and legality, and are claiming to use legislations that have not even been enacted yet.
- In April 2024, filed another RTI with MeitY this time, asking what law/policy document they are following in implementing the scheme, since MoE seems to have shrugged off the responsibility of answering that question.
- In April 2024, we also requested one specific document from MoE about APAAR ID which (as gathered from a 03:38:18 hour long video of the Minister of Education and school principals talking praise about the project) was likely to contain the policy implementation plan for APAAR ID.
Running in circles
Our April 2024 RTI request, where we requested a specific policy document from MoE, contained two questions:
- Please provide a copy of the document titled – Schooling: Access and Quality – presented by MoE at the 3rd National Conference of Chief Secretaries held in New Delhi on December 28-29, 2023; and
- Please provide a copy of any responses, communication, discussions, debates or outcome documents from this meeting relating to National Education Policy 2020 and APAAR ID.
Between April and present day, i.e. late October 2024, this simple RTI request has been transferred more than 30 times in a cyclic manner between four departments in MeitY and MoE: Department of School Education & Literacy (“DOSEL”); Department of Higher Education (“DOHED”); Department of IT & Electronics (“DITEC”); and Digital India Corporation (or “MELAB”). And funnily enough, almost always in that order! With every department ascribing it a new RTI number, the transfer history looks like this:
- DOSEL/R/E/24/01795
- DOHED/R/T/24/00425
- DITEC/R/T/24/00267
- MELAB/R/T/24/00078
- DOHED/R/T/24/00443
- DITEC/R/T/24/00286
- MELAB/R/T/24/00081
- DOSEL/R/T/24/00520
- DOHED/R/T/24/00467
- DITEC/R/T/24/00299
- MELAB/R/T/24/00123
- DOSEL/R/T/24/00557
- DOHED/R/T/24/00503
- DITEC/R/T/24/00315
- MELAB/R/T/24/00131
- DOSEL/R/T/24/00597
- DOHED/R/T/24/00550
- DITEC/R/T/24/00332
- MELAB/R/T/24/00138
- DOHED/R/T/24/00615
- DITEC/R/T/24/00355
- MELAB/R/T/24/00144
- DOHED/R/T/24/00657
- DITEC/R/T/24/00375
- MELAB/R/T/24/00151
- DOHED/R/T/24/00715
- DOHED/R/T/24/00715/1
- DOHED/R/T/24/00715/2,
- DOHED/R/T/24/00715/3
- DOSEL/R/T/24/00749
- DOHED/R/T/24/00906
- DOHED/R/T/24/00906/1
On August 12, 2024 we received a partial response to the second question of our RTI where we had asked for discussions, communications or outcome documents from the meeting which was held to discuss NEP 2020. In the reply, they mentioned that the copy of the NEP 2020 and all details pertaining to this policy is available on this website. This website only comprised the policy itself and did not indicate any discussions or communications which were involved in the policy formulation.
It is now late October and we are still waiting for the specific document that we had asked for which had been reportedly presented in December 2023. This follows a consistent trend of evading any question regarding APAAR ID, made all the more dangerous given the speed at which enrollment is being conducted under the ID.
Following the July 2023 circular, many states kick-started APAAR ID enrollment for schools within their territory under their NEP 2020 compliance processes, and others have now started to join in.
Rajasthan and Chandigarh are reported to start enrollment in October 2024. Odisha planned to roll out APAAR registration starting October 15, 2024. On October 01, 2024 as reported in The Hindu, Andhra Pradesh has also directed school management/boards to create APAAR IDs for students.
As of September 2024, Gujarat has started enrollment and aims to onboard 28 lakh students, Assam has introduced the project, Chhattisgarh directed all district collectors to facilitate the implementation of the APAAR ID scheme.
In states like Jharkhand, and Maharashtra, education departments had already implemented the APAAR ID in October 2023 and facilitated special parent-teacher meetings to secure parental consent for the creation of APAAR IDs. However, the departments have not issued any statements regarding whether the creation of APAAR IDs is mandatory.
Aside from these news reports, schools, colleges and universities in some states have started the creation of APAAR IDs even without the official implementation of the scheme by the state governments.
As per interpretation of the right to privacy under J (Retd) K.S Puttaswamy v. Union of India [(2019) 1 SCC 1], any privacy-infringing measure by the State must satisfy a five prong test for it to be a justified and reasonable restriction on the right. The first prong is legality, i.e., the privacy-infringing measure must be based in law.
The implementation of the APAAR ID continues at worrying speeds without a clear law/policy or guiding document grounding it. All our transparency efforts in asking for the law/policy framework has resulted in the Ministries either stating it is being drafted, or sending our RTI requests on an indefinite expedition around departments with 30+ transfers. Even if the policy has since been drafted but not made public, various schools had started enrollment back in October 2023, in the absence thereof.
A highly privacy-intrusive scheme is being implemented aggressively across states without not only a specific law/policy guiding it, but also without an active data protection law. As a scheme that is linked with Aadhaar but ‘voluntary’ on paper, it also seems to be following in the footsteps of Aadhaar, in actually being ‘mandatory’ in practice. Educationists believe that, much like Aadhaar verification, schools will be forced to ensure the participation of all students and parents. Though the consent of parents is mandatory, parents seem to either not know they have an option, or are not given an opportunity to say “no”. Some parents have pointed out that there is no option to deny consent on the Aadhaar consent form handed to them as part of the APAAR enrollment.
Schools are also reported to be grappling with the uncertainty of how to proceed if a parent refuses to complete the form. The MoE Secretary had instructed schools to hold “special” parent-teachers’ meetings to educate parents on the benefits of APAAR initiative and encourage them to give consent towards creating students’ APAAR IDs. This “encouragement” can easily take the form of arm-twisting, coercion, or taking consent without providing enough information. As schools are pressured into meeting certain implementation targets for the APAAR framework, they may also increasingly resort to coercion or force to get parents to give their consent. This process is more problematic in rural areas as the parents may not completely understand the consequences of giving consent due to low data or tech literacy, and may end up easily giving consent because they were told to do so by teachers.
Instances of millions of rural, nomadic, destitute, or marginalised individuals being denied basic necessities, such as food rations, and students being refused school admissions for not possessing an Aadhaar card are well-documented. The fear around implementing APAAR ID as a basis for education in India is rooted in these past experiences.
We explored these concerns in depth in our previous post, which also shed light on the fact that this is being pushed from the top. The Bharatiya Janata Party, in its 2024 Lok Sabha Elections Manifesto, pushed for the universal adoption of the problematic APAAR framework. “We will achieve 100% implementation of ‘One Nation, One Student ID’ through the Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) to store academic qualifications, credit scores and certificates, among others for students from pre-primary to higher education”, the Manifesto stated.
With the party in power for another term, we may continue to move towards this 100% implementation goal without the requisite checks in place. This can be catastrophic for the privacy and autonomy of students across India, unless we resist it as a community. We believe that the way that this framework is created is invasive by design and should be rolled back.