Sometimes it seems as though headline writers don'e even bother to read the articles.
India removes 384K Aadhaar biometric IDs (ZDNet) — Properly speaking, they weren't biometric ID's because they were created under the "biometric exceptions" provision that allowed for enrollments to be created without an acceptable biometric identifier. That provision was exploited by unscrupulous registrars who created fake enrollments for which they were paid.
The "biometric exception" was created out of necessity to account for those with unreadable fingerprints or for those who lacked fingers or hands altogether, however three quarters of the IDs generated under the biometric exception clause have been found to be fraudulent.
It is also interesting to note that if UID lacked a provision for the collection of a biometric identifier, it is unlikely that the large scale fraud would have been detected at all.
