Unique Identification Authority of India
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has achieved a big goal by completing the Mandatory Biometric Update (MBU) of more than one crore children studying in 83,000 schools across the country. This campaign is being considered an important step towards updating and strengthening the Aadhaar of children.
According to UIDAI, while making Aadhaar for children below five years of age, only photo, name, date of birth, gender, address and birth certificate are taken. At this age, children’s fingerprints and iris are not fully developed, so this biometric information is not recorded at that time. For this reason, on completion of 5 years and 15 years of age, it is mandatory to update the information of fingerprints and iris in Aadhaar, which is called MBU.
The campaign was started in September 2025
If MBU is not done on time in Aadhaar, then children may face problems while availing benefits of government schemes, getting identity verification done and registering in competitive and university examinations like NEET, JEE, CUET. Keeping this problem in mind, UIDAI started a school-centric campaign.
Under this special campaign launched in September 2025, UIDAI did technical integration with the UDISE+ system of the Ministry of Education. With this, schools became able to clearly see which children’s MBU was pending. After this, special camps were organized in the school premises itself, so that the biometric updating of children could be completed easily.
Updated 1.3 crore additional biometrics
UIDAI has made MBU completely free for children aged 7 to 15 years from October 1 for a period of one year. UIDAI CEO Bhuvnesh Kumar has written a letter to the Chief Secretaries of all states and union territories, appealing for cooperation in organizing focused MBU camps in schools.
UIDAI says that this mission mode campaign will continue until all the schools in the country are covered. Apart from schools, children can also complete their MBU by visiting any Aadhaar Enrollment Center or Aadhaar Seva Kendra. According to UIDAI, about 1.3 crore additional biometric updates have also been done at these centers during the same period.