Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The waiver that makes a child’s Aadhaar biometric update free between the ages of five and seventeen expires on 30 September. Two crore families have used it. Many more have not.
The Unique Identification Authority of India said on 18 August that it has completed more than two crore Mandatory Biometric Updates for school children, covering over 1.56 lakh schools since the drive began in September 2025. The updates were done through school camps, coordinated by UIDAI with state and Union Territory education departments, and made possible by linking UIDAI’s systems to UDISE+, the school education database, so that a school can see which of its children still need the update.
The rule itself is simple and widely misunderstood. A child enrolled for Aadhaar below the age of five gives only demographic details and a photograph — fingerprints and iris patterns are not captured, because they are still forming. The biometrics must therefore be added when the child turns five, and captured again at fifteen. That is the Mandatory Biometric Update, and without it a child’s Aadhaar will not authenticate reliably.
Where the update happens: a government primary school classroom in Kerala. Taking the camp to the school rather than the family to the enrolment centre is what moved two crore updates in eleven months — an average of about 128 children per school covered.
The cost is not the point of the deadline. The examination hall is. A child whose Aadhaar will not authenticate can be stopped at the registration stage for NEET, JEE or CUET — years before anyone notices.
At a Glance
• Announced: 18 August 2026, by UIDAI
• Completed: over 2 crore updates · over 1.56 lakh schools
• Drive began: September 2025
• When required: when a child turns 5, and again at 15
• Free until: 30 September 2026, for ages 5 to 17
• Why the waiver exists: charges for the 7–15 group were waived from 1 October 2025 for one year; ages 5–7 and 15–17 are free anyway
• Risk of skipping it: failed authentication for scheme benefits and for NEET, JEE and CUET registration
The practical advice is narrow and worth stating plainly. If a child in the household is between five and seventeen and has not had fingerprints and iris captured since the original enrolment, the update should be done before 30 September, when the 7–15 waiver lapses. It can be done at any Aadhaar enrolment or update centre, and in many districts it is still being done at the school itself — parents should ask the school office first, because the camp route requires no travel and no appointment. Children in the 5–7 and 15–17 brackets remain free of charge regardless of the deadline; it is the 7–15 group whose window is closing.
Two crore updates in eleven months is a substantial delivery, and the UDISE+ integration is the reason: the system can now tell a headmaster exactly which children on the roll are overdue, which converts a national instruction into a class-by-class list. The constructive step from here is transparency about the denominator. UIDAI has not published how many children in the 5–17 band remain outstanding, and publishing that figure state by state — alongside the completed count — would let districts see where the camps still need to go, and let parents see whether their own state is ahead or behind. A deadline works best when everyone can see the queue.
