In a statement here on Wednesday, Mr. Achuthanandan said the government decision was immoral and motivated only by commercial interests since it did not take into account the security and private issues involved in such a move. The UID project involved collection of finger prints and personal information about every citizen. Collection and storage of such information in biometric form had given rise to widespread concern across the world, especially since technical experts were of the view that such information was vulnerable to misuse. The State government should not go ahead with the project without a detailed discussion on all such issues and taking all the necessary precautions, he said.
The Leader of the Opposition pointed out that several countries such as United Kingdom and Philippines had given up similar projects realising the dangers involved and had destroyed all the information collected by them. Instead of learning appropriate lessons from the mistakes committed by others, the Central government was repeating the same mistakes. It was going ahead with the project with the limited objective of providing business to IT companies hit by the global economic recession, he alleged.
LDF stance
Mr. Achuthanandan said the LDF government had communicated its reservations about the project to the Centre in the light of the serious criticism about it. Its decision was that the project need be implemented in the State only on a pilot basis, giving the option to people to become part of it or stay out. The UDF government had, on the contrary, decided to implement it without any discussion despite its implications for the privacy and security of the citizens.
There were clear commercial motives behind the haste to implement the project, which had failed to take off at the global level.
Implementation of the project would call for purchase of biometric equipment and there was information that some industrialists were working behind the scene to get the project implemented, the Mr. Achuthanandan alleged.