Panchayati Raj minister wants EPIC and biometrics, not Aadhaar, for some welfare payments

Union Panchayati Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh, also known as Lallan Singh, has said that payments to beneficiaries under schemes in his remit should stop using Aadhaar as the primary identifier and instead rely on biometric authentication plus the Electors Photo Identity Card, or EPIC, number. The Hindu and The Indian Express both quote him arguing that Aadhaar enrolment is now available on every street and that a card can be made in about five minutes, which he says weakens fraud controls.

He repeated the line at a People's Plan Campaign workshop in Delhi and again in Gangtok on 3 November 2026. Coverage stresses that this is a ministerial statement, not a gazetted rule change. The Indian Express notes that the Panchayati Raj Ministry itself does not currently run large schemes that push cash straight into individual bank accounts, though Singh also holds Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, where some programmes still mandate Aadhaar authentication.

Politics moved faster than the paperwork. On 6 November, Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh asked whether the remarks were official government policy and warned that tying welfare to electoral rolls after Special Intensive Revision deletions would amount to rights theft, The New Indian Express reported. For India's digital public infrastructure debate, the episode matters because Aadhaar remains the default rail for PM-Kisan, rural housing, pensions and other transfers. Any EPIC-first path would need scheme notifications, biometric failure fallbacks and clarity for people missing from voter lists before it becomes more than a speech.