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

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

10455 - Govt to link all ration cards to Aadhaar by end-FY17 - Business Standard


Fingerprint failure reports of existing Aadhaar-linked PDS cases not revealed
September 17, 2016 Last Updated at 00:23 IST



The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has decided to complete the linking the bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers of all the beneficiaries of large social schemes, including the National Food Security Act, by March 2017. Once done, the delivery of these schemes would be based on biometric authentication linked to Aadhaar or direct cash transfers to linked bank accounts of beneficiaries.

The directions came after a meeting held at the Prime Minister's Office in June this year to link not only cash-based benefits but also those in kind under different central schemes to Aadhaar. Since then, the Centre has repeatedly written to states to make the transition. Business Standard has reviewed the minutes of the meeting as well as the Centre's missives to states.



On Thursday, the government moved a step closer to making the use of Aadhaar mandatory. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) sent out a circular asking all government authorities in the Centre and states to identify schemes, benefits and processes where the Aadhaar platform would be made compulsory.

But, the results of deploying Aadhaar-based biometric authentication in the public distribution system (PDS) across a few states are yet to be made public by the central government, leaving states to divulge data, if they wish, in different formats. Some of these states have reported relatively high failure rates at times.

A B Pandey, chief executive officer of UIDAI, said the authority did not reveal the reports on how the biometric authentication was working although it collects these reports for each entity using the Aadhaar-linked authentication system.

The ministry for food did not reply to a detailed questionnaire asking for data on the efficacy of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication from states and districts where it has already been deployed in complete or in pilot study mode. Andhra Pradesh, one of the early movers, has put 28,000 ration shops on the Aadhaar platform. Pandey said it now showed 4-5 per cent failure rate.

Rajasthan is the other state that has put all its ration shops on the platform. Assessment done by MAZDOOR KISAN SHAKTI SANGATHAN showed that in the state less than 65 per cent of the people on average were availing rations through the biometric authentication. The data did not reveal how the rest had accessed their rations though the systems provide for a manual over-ride which remain as leak-prone as the earlier non-computerised system followed earlier of maintain registers.

Replying to an answer in the Parliament on the failure in Rajasthan, the state minister for finance, Arjun Ram Meghwal, had recently said UIDAI concluded the lack of infrastructure was to blame. This included insufficient lease-line capacity between servers of Rajasthan government and UIDAI Data Centres, poor mobile signal at fair price shops, incorrect seeding of Aadhaar numbers in PDS database and insufficient number of Iris devices to deal with the cases of poor finger print quality.

The UIDAI chief admitted in an interview to Business Standard that Andhra Pradesh had managed lower failure rates after a lot of effort and that states with worse infrastructure would find it more difficult, though he narrowed the list of such states down to northeast.

Last year the central government had given the states only two choices. Either they had to move on to the Aadhaar-linked authentication system for distribution of grains or turn the subsidised food supply to cash transfers. At that stage it had asked that states carry out pilots. Some like Jharkhand have. In Ranchi all the ration shops were put on the platform but less than 50 per cent of the people got their rations through biometric authentication in July 2016 (the month for which data was available for analysis), wrote economist Jean Dreze recently.

In its defence, the UIDAI CEO says protocols exist to manage when biometric authentication fails. A fall back option is deploying Iris reading machines, but these are only recommended and not made mandatory. Reverting back to manual override on the machines, which is also available, on the other hand brings the system back to pre-computerisation days. UIDAI says it is taking teams from other states to Andhra Pradesh to learn lessons.

The centre is holding a two day meeting of state officials on Friday and Saturday on computerisation of the public distribution system in which several sessions are dedicated to linking the provision of subsidised rations to the Aadhaar platform.

Directives on advancing Aadhaar-linked benefits


1-All central cash or kind benefit schemes to be brought under DBT by end of fiscal

2-Seeding of aadhaar in schemes like MNREGA, PDS, Scholarships, PMJDY, Pensions, EPFO to be completed by March 2017

3-Grants to state under ICDS, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Mid-Day Meal Scheme could be linked to Aadhaar enrolment

4-Enrolment of children in Anganwadi and schools to enhance coverage in this segment

5-Payment to para-teachers, ASHA and anganwadi workers to be made through Aadhaar

6-‘Give up Subsidy’ push to be extended to other schemes

7-Concessions in railways to be linked up

8-Aadhaar number of individuals and office bearers of entities to be obtained in Income Tax Returns

9-Study to assess cash in lieu of kind benefits under PDS to be undertaken

10-Automated system to disqualify beneficiaries when they get government jobs or reach cut-off income levels

Visualised by: Aditya Laxman Jakki