APAAR ID voluntary, but parents, activists worry about growing mandates

Concerns over mandatory APAAR ID for students, linking to Aadhaar, raise data privacy and legal issues for parents.

Parents and activists worry that the Ministry of Education’s Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR) ID for school students could become near impossible to opt out from, even though the programme is supposed to be voluntary. The APAAR ID ties into DigiLocker and the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC), which the government hopes to use to standardise students’ school transcripts in a uniform way as a “single source of truth”. 

However, the APAAR ID system has drawn scrutiny on data privacy and necessity grounds. While the Education Ministry has said in a document on its website that getting an APAAR ID is not mandatory, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) told schools in a circular this January that it expects them “to ensure 100% saturation of APAAR IDs for all students,” a directive that many schools have taken as a mandate.

APAAR IDs are linked to Aadhaar, and some parents who are willing to enrol their children have reported issues linking students’ Aadhaar with APAAR, due to spelling mismatch between their name in school records and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s database. These parents must be referred to a Common Service Centre to update children’s documents, the CBSE has said in its January circular. 

“The APAAR ID system presents significant risks, especially in the collection and handling of minors’ sensitive data, including personal and academic information, without adequate legal safeguards or robust data protection measures,” the Internet Freedom Foundation, a Delhi-based advocacy group, wrote in December. The Education Ministry has admitted that there is no law to mandate APAAR IDs for parents who do not want to enrol their children in the registry.

Another advocacy group, the Software Freedom Law Centre, India (SFLC), has published a form that parents can use to inform schools that APAAR is not mandatory, to persuade school administrations that enrolment cannot be compelled. Sandeep Hegde, a Bengaluru-based parent, pushed back against APAAR at his child’s school, and was able to get the school to back off from the request, at least for him.

But recent steps at the State level may make it harder for schools to listen to parents in these cases.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Director General of School Education indicated last week that it was using APAAR to find discrepancy in school enrolment records, and that it would hold officials responsible if major changes were found. In another case in Bahraich district, madrasas which did not enrol their students were warned that they would be de-recognised if they did not start APAAR enrolment. Uttar Pradesh officials did not respond to queries by The Hindu.