AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 12987 - Aadhaar still a must to avail of services, says UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey

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

Saturday, March 17, 2018

12987 - Aadhaar still a must to avail of services, says UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey

Aadhaar still a must to avail of services, says UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey

The CEO of UIDAI says despite SC indefinitely extending deadline for Aadhaar linking, new applicants for bank accounts, Tatkal passports and telecom services will still have to provide the unique ID number.

INDIA Updated: Mar 16, 2018 10:36 Ist

Komal Gupta

Hindustan Times, Mumbai

File photo of chief executive officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India Ajay Bhushan Pandey. (Ramesh Pathania/Mint)

New applicants for bank accounts, Tatkal passports, mutual funds and telecom services will have to still provide their Aadhaar number to avail of services even after the Supreme Court indefinitely extended the 31 March deadline, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive officer of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said in an interview on Tuesday. The apex court extended the deadline until after it rules on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar.

Edited excerpts:

What does the Supreme Court’s interim order on Tuesday mean?

The Attorney General had earlier made a statement that when the time comes the government would not be averse to extending the deadline. Based on that, when the matter came up on Tuesday again, the Attorney General said that we may extend the date for bank accounts and other services, but so far as the benefits, subsidies and services under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act are concerned, that should remain undisturbed. The court accepted both the arguments and gave the order that for subsidies and welfare programme under Section 7, the deadline will remain as it is. For bank accounts and non-subsidy areas like passport, telecom, the linkage with the existing account, the court has directed that the interim order of 15.12.2017 shall stand extended till the matter is finally heard and the judgement is pronounced.

However, for opening new accounts, either the Aadhaar number or the enrolment ID is required. So, some reports in media saying that Aadhaar number is not any more required for bank accounts, mutual funds, telecom, etc. are not correct. In each sector, there are two types of things — the existing ones and the new ones. For the existing ones, the date has been extended, but for the new ones, such as opening of new accounts, etc., Aadhaar is required.

There seems to be some confusion with the Tatkal passports….

The Supreme Court order is clear and is applicable to passport also. In case of applying for a new Tatkal passport, Aadhaar number or enrolment ID with other documents is needed. To that extent, we did not see much change in status for Tatkal passports from the court’s order.

Many states collected their own biometric database before the Aadhaar Act was passed in 2016. In a Supreme Court hearing, the Gujarat government lawyer said that data has been destroyed after the enactment of the Act. Did UIDAI also dump some data related to them?

The other side (petitioners against Aadhaar) said that there were some states creating state resident data and that was not good as it leads to a surveillance state.

In pre-Aadhaar (Act) situation, all the state governments were our registrars i.e. they were registering people for Aadhaar. Whenever someone enrols, the demographic information i.e. name, date of birth, address and biometrics- photograph, fingerprint and iris (scan) — are collected. The states used to keep a copy and send another copy to us. The information was stored in an encrypted manner and there was a key to it. We would do the de-duplication at the backend to generate an Aadhaar number and inform you of the Aadhaar number so that you will have a database of all the persons you have registered along with the Aadhaar number now and the other information you already have.

But yes, it’s a fact that the information was available to them as it was the arrangement under which they were collecting the information itself.

There was also another situation. Suppose you have gone to a bank and have enrolled for Aadhaar, so the bank will have one copy but while filing the application form you say that I don’t have any objection if my data is shared with the entities involved in the delivery of social benefits. For such people, even though the registration has been done by the bank and bank has the biometrics..., we gave the demographic information and Aadhaar number to the state governments. So the state governments had a dataset, one dataset of the people whom they have enrolled along with their biometrics and another is the ones that they got from other registrars where they got only the demographic data. This was called State Resident Data Hub and the idea was that the state governments are involved in the various benefit schemes like MGNREGA, PDS etc. and accordingly plans (benefits of) which schemes should be given to you and which schemes should not be given to you.

However, when the Aadhaar Act came, many of these things went away. The first thing that went away was that we stopped giving one copy of the data to them. We also told them ‘please destroy all the biometric data that we have given to you before the Act.’