Call to purge unique card plan
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Patna, Jan. 10: The unique identification (UID) project, headed by former Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani, came in for strong criticism today from academics and legal experts at a round-table meeting at AN Sinha Institute.
The meeting was organised to discuss the parliamentary standing committee report on the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) “Aadhaar” project and the National Population Register (NPR)-based Multipurpose National Identity Cards (MNIC).
At the meeting, called by AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna, Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), New Delhi and Citizens’ Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL), New Delhi, speakers said the state government should put a stay on the execution of both the UID and the MNIC projects.
Mohan Rao, professor, Centre for Social Medicine & Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said: “UID is dangerous for public health. It should be rejected unequivocally because it violates confidentiality and privacy which is considered sacred in medical practice… The UID’s public health paper is an idiotic paper which is not aware of public health reality.”
J.T. D’Souza, expert, biometrics technology, Mumbai, said: “Both the UID and the NPR projects are based on a technology that is flawed. The technology of biometrics has never been tested on such a large population. Even on a tiny population, as in Seoul (South Korea), it does not work for 50 per cent people.” D’Souza insisted that the UID’s claim of reducing duplication was wrong, as it would only “multiply the problem”.
D.M. Diwakar, director, AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, academics N.K. Choudhary and Vinay Kanth were also present at the meeting.
Gopal Krishna, member, CFCL, said: “The UID requires biometric data like photograph, fingerprints and iris scanning. This is not good for India. Countries like the USA, the UK, China and the Supreme Court of Philippines have already rejected it.”
The Bihar government had signed a memorandum of understanding with the UIDAI on August 20, 2010. The recent report by the multi-party parliamentary panel on finance cited global experience as well as citizens’ testimony to reject biometric data-based identification of Indians.
Diwakar said: “In the aftermath of this report (by the parliamentary panel), the continuation of this project and the ongoing collection of demographic and biometric data needs to be rigorously examined, as also its ramifications for the project in Bihar.”
He added that both the UIDAI and the NPR are involved in similar exercises resulting in extraordinary amount of duplication of work.