Editorials, Opinions & Explained2 Items

Core TopicImportantConcise

OpinionsGS Paper II & III

01Aadhaar-Linked Verification of Electoral Rolls02Legacy of the Global War on Terror

OpinionsSigned Op-Ed Columns

01

Government Trusts Aadhaar for Welfare; Should It Trust It for Voter Rolls Too?

Core TopicOpinionGS-II · Polity — Election Commission, Citizenship, Aadhaar ActPrelims + MainsThe Indian Express · Opinion (R S Sharma)

The author, a former Secretary to the Government of India and founding Director-General of UIDAI, argues that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls should shift from door-to-door paper verification to a voluntary Aadhaar-linked face-authentication mechanism, reserving the Ministry of Home Affairs' citizenship-determination role for the few flagged exceptions.

◆ Static Anchor — the constitutional and statutory architecture

Preparation of electoral rolls is a Constitutional function of the Election Commission under Article 324, operationalised through the Representation of the People Act, 1950. UIDAI was established in 2009 (statutorily backed by the Aadhaar Act, 2016), which under Section 9 explicitly bars Aadhaar from being treated as proof of citizenship or domicile — it establishes identity and residence only.

• SIR has been rolling out in phases since June 2025 and has deleted over 13 crore names nationally.
• On 27 May, the Supreme Court upheld the SIR exercise but held that final citizenship determination rests with the MHA under the Citizenship Act, 1955 — not with the Election Commission.

The case the author makes for Aadhaar-linked verification

• Scale and cost: SIR mobilises roughly 10 lakh public servants (mostly schoolteachers) and recurs at a cost of thousands of crores every cycle.
• Design logic: Aadhaar was created as a bare identity credential carrying no entitlement at enrolment, so the author argues there was no incentive to misstate age or address at the time of registration.
• Demonstrated scale of trust already extended: over 10 crore face-authentication transactions via DigiYatra across 100+ airports; 1.47 crore pensioners authenticate annually through Jeevan Pramaan; a cumulative 500 crore Aadhaar face authentications government-wide.
• Prior welfare use: Aadhaar-based de-duplication is credited with removing ghost beneficiaries and saving an estimated ₹2.7 lakh crore in leakages.
• Age inference without a birth date: since biometrics are not captured below age five, anyone enrolled before roughly 2013 was at least five then, hence at least 18 now — sufficient to establish voting eligibility.

Figure 1 — Current SIR process versus the proposed Aadhaar-linked alternative

Current SIR methodDoor-to-doorenumerationPaper documentverificationDeletion ofunverified namesAppeals &grievance redressEC finalises roll(recurs each cycle)Proposed Aadhaar-linked alternativeVoluntaryAadhaar–EPIClinkingFaceauthentication(mobile/web)Automatedde-duplication &ghost removalAnalytics flagsgenuineoutliers onlyMHA determinescitizenship(flagged cases only)Those who decline linkage continue on the ordinary manual route — a residual share, given near-universal Aadhaar coverage.Citizenship determination stays with the MHA under the Citizenship Act, 1955 (per the SC's 27 May ruling)— that step is unchanged across both flows.Illustrative process comparison drawn from the arguments made in the source column; not an official EC or UIDAI diagram.

The author's proposal keeps MHA's citizenship-determination role intact but confines it to analytics-flagged outliers, rather than a universal paper check.

Constraints the author concedes

• Aadhaar cannot, by statute, prove citizenship — a passport (held by under 8% of Indians) was itself clarified by the MEA in June as a travel document, not proof of citizenship.
• Precedents caution against overreach: the multipurpose National Identity Card pilot was abandoned; the Assam NRC excluded 19 lakh people amid enormous distress; the National Population Register settled for enumerating "usual residents" rather than attempting a citizenship test in the field.
• Linkage is proposed as voluntary, with a manual route retained for those who decline.

The critical view

The argument is a strong efficiency case, but it understates two structural questions.

First, the Justice K S Puttaswamy (2018) verdict restricted mandatory Aadhaar use to welfare subsidies under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act; extending it, even voluntarily, into the electoral domain may require fresh legislative clarity rather than executive practice alone.

Second, "voluntary" linkage at scale has historically produced de facto compulsion through administrative convenience, and biometric authentication failure rates — well documented in welfare delivery among manual labourers and the elderly — could replicate the very exclusion the author seeks to avoid, only through a different mechanism.

Institutions & terms to know

• SIR (Special Intensive Revision): a more rigorous, document-based revision of electoral rolls than the routine annual summary revision.
• Puttaswamy judgment (2017 & 2018): established privacy as a fundamental right and restricted Aadhaar's mandatory scope to Section 7 welfare purposes.
• NPR vs NRC: the National Population Register enumerates all "usual residents"; the National Register of Citizens (piloted in Assam) attempts to identify citizens specifically.

✎ Mains Practice Question

Examine the constitutional and statutory constraints on using Aadhaar-based authentication for the revision of electoral rolls in India. Would a voluntary Aadhaar-EPIC linkage address the concerns raised by the Supreme Court on the Special Intensive Revision exercise? 15 marks · 250 words

02

War on Terror Is Over, But Its Legacy Continues to Haunt

Core TopicOpinionGS-III · Internal Security — Terrorism, External LinkagesGS-II · IR — India's Neighbourhood, Afghanistan-PakistanPrelims + MainsThe Indian Express · Opinion (Anju Gupta)

The author, a security analyst and former Director-General of Police, traces two decades of the US-led War on Terror (WoT) from the 11 September 2001 attacks to its effective doctrinal end, arguing that while the global "war" framing has receded, the Af-Pak-origin threat to India has neither ended nor changed character.

◆ Static Anchor — origins of the network

Al Qaeda (AQ) was founded by Osama bin Laden in Peshawar around May 1988, with roots in the globalisation of the Afghan jihad against Soviet occupation (1979–89) — a mobilisation of foreign fighters facilitated in part by a fatwa issued by Abdullah Azzam after his move to Islamabad in 1981.

• The 11 September 2001 attacks killed roughly 3,000 people, including 2,600 Americans, using hijacked aircraft as improvised weapons against the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and a fourth target thwarted over Pennsylvania.
• Earlier AQ-linked attacks included the 1993 WTC bombing, the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 USS Cole attack off Yemen.

Figure 2 — Timeline of the War on Terror and its South Asian aftermath

1988AQ founded,Peshawar20019/11; US invadesAfghanistan2003US invades Iraq;Saddam removed2011Bin Laden killed,Abbottabad2013–19AQI → ISIS;caliphate defeated2025Pahalgam attack;India-Pakistan clashNov 2025Red Fort attack,DelhiGlobal "War on Terror" frame (2001–2021)South Asia's Pakistan-linked networks predate and outlast itDates as stated in the source column; not exhaustive of every WoT milestone.

The formal "global war" framing has wound down since the 2011 killing of bin Laden and the 2019 defeat of the territorial caliphate, but the Pakistan-linked threat to India persists into 2025.

Trajectory of the War on Terror

• 2001: US-led invasion of Afghanistan removes the first Taliban regime; around 50 countries contribute troops under US/NATO-led efforts.
• 2003: US invasion of Iraq removes Saddam Hussein, but draws only British, Australian and Polish troops — a narrower coalition, marking the fracturing of WoT-era consensus.
• 2011: Bin Laden is killed in Pakistan; the US nonetheless takes over a decade more to exit Afghanistan.
• 2013–2019: Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) morphs into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), declaring a territorial "caliphate" before its defeat by a US-led coalition by March 2019.

The Af-Pak Connection and India

Pakistani mobilisation for the Afghan jihad produced networks whose leaders later founded groups that assumed the identities of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which Pakistan has continued to deploy against India even as the global WoT framing recedes.

• The 2025 Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent "limited" India-Pakistan conflict illustrate the persistence of this threat.
• The November 2025 Red Fort attack in Delhi, and continuing military friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan, indicate enduring regional instability a quarter-century after 9/11.

The critical view

The US has formally moved away from framing counter-terrorism as a unified "global war," even as its agencies continue targeted operations; meanwhile, AQ- and ISIS-affiliated groups persist in a decentralised form across Yemen, Somalia, the Sahel, and South Asia.

For India, this poses an analytical mismatch: its principal terrorism threat is a protracted, state-linked regional phenomenon rooted in the 1980s Afghan jihad, only loosely synchronised with the rise-and-decline cycle of the global WoT narrative — meaning India's counter-terrorism posture cannot simply track shifts in US doctrine.

Institutions & terms to know

• Al Qaeda vs ISIS/Daesh: AQ pursued a networked, clandestine model; ISIS (2014–19) briefly held and administered territory as a self-declared caliphate.
• Taliban 1.0 vs Taliban 2.0: the pre-2001 regime removed by the US invasion, versus the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan after the 2021 US withdrawal.
• UNSC Resolution 1373 (2001): mandated international cooperation on counter-terrorism financing and legal frameworks in the aftermath of 9/11.

✎ Mains Practice Question

"The global 'War on Terror' has formally wound down, but South Asia's terrorism challenge has neither ended nor changed character." Critically examine this statement with reference to India's security environment. 15 marks · 250 words

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