In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Sunday, April 10, 2016

9801 - Aadhaar-linked LPG: Govt says Rs 15,000 cr saved, survey says only Rs 14 cr in FY15 Business Standard

Research says Aadhaar was not necessary for de-duplication exercise
Nitin Sethi  |  New Delhi 
March 18, 2016 Last Updated at 12:00 IST


What has been the net benefit that arose out of using Aadhaar within the Direct Benefits Transfer of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or PAHAL scheme as it is now called? Research done by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) says the benefit from Aadhaar in the scheme through de-duplication of records was at best limited to Rs 12-14 crore in 2014-15 and about Rs 120.90 crore in 2015-16, that, too, before accounting for any additional costs.

NOT LINKED
Research done by International Institute for Sustainable Development says the benefit from Aadhaar in the PAHAL scheme through de-duplication of records was about Rs 120.90 crore in 2015-16, that, too, before accounting for any additional costs

Nandan Nilekani wrote in The Indian Express on March 9 that there was “visible evidence of its utility with Rs 10,000 crore-plus savings in LPG subsidy in one year alone”

This is in sharp contrast to the figures quoted by the government or the founder of Aadhaar. Nandan Nilekani wrote in The Indian Express on March 9 that there was "visible evidence of its utility with Rs 10,000 crore-plus savings in LPG subsidy in one year alone". He was quoted on December 7, 2015 in The Indian Express as saying, "The government has also saved $2.5 billion in one year by linking LPG users to Aadhaar numbers." Recently, in a debate in the Lok Sabha, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "Today, by just using the technology and targeting the subsidy, in the initial stages itself, the saving for the central government has been Rs 15,000 crore." He was also speaking on the use of Aadhaar in the LPG distribution scheme.

IISD's researcher Kieran Clarke, in his paper, "More ghost savings: Understanding fiscal impact of India's direct transfer program - Update", has argued that the government has miscalculated the savings by crediting the Aadhaar platform for the work that oil marketing companies (OMCs) had already done of weeding out duplicates and ghost customers before Aadhaar or DBTL was introduced. He concludes that the list-based weeding out of duplicates by the OMCs was 15-20 times more effective in identifying irregular connections than the Aadhaar system. He summarises, "It is the connection regularisation program, which in no way required the introduction of either DBTL or Aadhaar, which has overwhelmingly been responsible for the identification and removal of invalid connections and associated consumption."

Reacting to the study, Dr A B P Pandey, director general and mission director of Unique Identification Authority of India said, "It is not possible to segregate and say how much Aadhaar achieved and how much was achieved otherwise by OMCs. We have to look at it as a whole collective exercise that began in 2012. But, without Aadhaar the benefits of de-duplication and weeding out would be temporary. Aadhaar has ensured that those who were weeded out don't come back in."

He also said, "Everyone knew then that Aadhaar is being introduced and it would catch people so they did their task more diligently."

Clarke, besides citing data of how the OMCs identified duplicate connections and then weeded a substantial part out, also cites the S G Dhande committee report of May 2014 which stated that "In the 291 districts covered under DBTL, 618,000 duplicate connections were identified out of over 40 million LPG consumers who provided Aadhaar numbers." He also cites the government of India's affidavit in July 2015 to the Supreme Court while advocating Aadhaar which notes that IOCL checked LPG connections against 80.8 million cards and found 800,000 instances of duplicate connections.

Clarke in his report states that by March 2012, the OMCs had already blocked 3.8 million connections and by November 2012 the OMCS had "therefore identified (through a process unconnected to DBTL or Aadhaar) at least 26.6 million potential multiple connections and of these blocked 5.3 million with a further 21.3 million potential connections undergoing a process of verification."

He writes that by May 2013, the government noted it had blocked 6.3 million duplicate connections, raising the total identified and blocked connections to at least 15.2 million which continued to be reported by the OMCs as part of the total connections given at that time. By March 2015, the number had risen to 12.7 million multiple connections - roughly half of the 26.6 million potential multiple connections identified in November 2012.

Using finance ministry's figures, Clarke notes, "As of April 2015, there were 85 million LPG customers linked to Aadhaar - over half of whom had been linked as part of previous implementation of DBTL by UPA government in 2013-14." He draws the assumption from it that approximately 35 million connections were newly linked to Aadhaar prior to April 1, 2015 through the PAHAL scheme by current government. Calculating the differential monthly per-cylinder subsidy rates, he also assumes that potentially irregular connections were identified and cancelled right at registration. Based on these assumptions, and not including the cost of implementing Aadhaar in DBTL, he concludes that roughly Rs 12-14 crore was saved in 2014-15 through the Aadhaar-based de-duplication process. Doing a similar exercise for 2015-16, Clarke assesses the savings in 2015-16 to be around Rs 120.90 crore.

"Aadhaar seeding is still going on. One cannot assess the total benefits of Aadhaar in the schemes before the exercise is completed. To derive the benefits of the de-duplication Aadhaar is essential. Or, just like it has always happened in the ration cards, you shall see ghost connections resurfacing every two years after the weeding exercise," Pande explained. "There is no system better equipped to deal with ghost cards than Aadhaar," he added.