UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, talked about trade with New Delhi, he was in India and met with Infosys co-founder, Nandan Nilekani, one of the architects of the Aadhaar, the digital Unique ID programme in the country.

Starmer and Nilekani came together at the time when the British government had been trying to introduce an equivalent of a national identification card, and the world leader went to the Infosys co-founder to guide him on the introduction of an Aadhaar-like card in the UK.

Nandan Nilekani is widely credited with the launch of Aadhaar in 2009, which has now been issued to almost all Indians and has become an indispensable part of the Indian identity.

According to Starmer's spokesman Dave Pares, who spoke to reporters in Mumbai on Wednesday, the UK PM “wanted to hear from him” as his government seeks to roll out a similar ID card.

Speaking to journalists in Mumbai,Keir Starmer said that the smartphone-based ID proposed by him is to “address the fact that too many people can come to this country to work illegally.”

Starmer said it would become compulsory for migrants to show the digital ID, similar to Aadhaar, to prove they had the right to work. He added that the government should make the case for other people to use it too, since “it would be a good passport.”

“I don’t know how many times the rest of you have had to look in the bottom drawer for three bills when you want to get your kids into school, or apply for this or apply for that,” he said, referring to a system many institutions have in place to check someone’s identity by cross-referencing it with their utility bills. “I do think we could gain a significant advantage.”

Keir Starmer on his way to Mumbai spoke to journalists, praising India's Aadhaar ecosystem.

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“I do think that we could gain a significant advantage. We’re going to a country, India, where they’ve already done ID and made a massive success of it. So one of the meetings I’ll be having is about ID, in relation to that,” he said.

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Aadhaar is used much more extensively in India, with people's biometric data being stored by the UIDAI. According to a report by the Guardian, the UK is not trying to copy that but is attempting to examine the way it was used and implemented.

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Such an idea, which was first floated and rejected in the 2000s, is unpopular with people across the political spectrum as they believe it would allow the government to exert control over where people spend their time, collect valuable data on their activities, or exclude the vulnerable.