India is exploring a partnership with Lithuania to upgrade the Aadhaar ecosystem. In an exclusive interview with The Pioneer, the Ambassador of Lithuania to India, Diana Mickeviciene revealed that her country is among the top three global players shortlisted for specialised components of the next-generation system.
According to the envoy, Lithuanian identity-technology firm Neurotechnology has been shortlisted alongside a French and a Japanese company. Their role, she said, would be limited to providing the technology necessary for identity de-duplication — a crucial process that ensures each Aadhaar number remains unique and eliminates the possibility of duplicate or fraudulent entries.
The ambassador said India, which runs the world’s largest digital identity programme, is now looking to integrate the most advanced global solutions as it considers the next phase of Aadhaar’s development. He noted that India’s decision to adopt a multi-vendor model, instead of handing over the project to a single large corporation, would reduce risks and help maintain complete sovereignty over the system.
Lithuania’s reputation in precision identity technology is one of the reasons its firms have been shortlisted. The country has built expertise in biometric de-duplication, voter roll purification, fraud elimination and crowd management systems.
Aadhaar 2.0 , as envisioned, aims to achieve near-zero duplication of digital identities, faster and more accurate biometric verification, advanced retina and fingerprint matching, and significantly strengthened cybersecurity safeguards. The Ambassador emphasised that international firms would only work on specific backend functions and would not gain access to the full Aadhaar system or any citizen data.
“India cannot hand over a nationally sensitive system to any single foreign entity. But for highly specialised functions like eliminating duplicate identities, it chooses the best in the world. Lithuania happens to be one of them,” the envoy said.
The Government of India has not officially announced the Aadhaar 2.0 project or disclosed details of any tendering process. However, the Ambassador’s remarks highlight deepening technological cooperation between India and Lithuania in the sensitive domain of digital identity infrastructure.
