AADHAAR RELATED ARTICLES: 2624 - Govt Committee to review residential ID Card scheme

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

Thursday, June 21, 2012

2624 - Govt Committee to review residential ID Card scheme

Govt committee to review residential ID card scheme

The plan is to widen the scope of RIC beyond a security-focused scheme

Sahil Makkar & Remya Nair

The government has set up a committee to examine whether the home ministry’s ambitious resident identity card (RIC) scheme can also serve as a platform for the delivery of financial services, rural employment, public distribution system and health insurance, in a move that is widely seen as being driven by a desire to increase the utility of the essentially security-focused scheme.

The government plans to use the Aadhaar platform of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for the public distribution system and direct cash transfers. Meanwhile, the finance ministry is believed to have piloted a direct cash transfer scheme in Mewat in Haryana.

The expenditure finance committee (EFC) headed by expenditure secretary Sumit Bose constituted the committee in the last week of April under B.K. Gairola, director general of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The other members include representatives from Registrar General of India, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, department of financial services, election commission and labour ministry.

“The technical committee was appointed with terms and reference to check the feasibility of the RIC in other sectors,” said a government official, who declined to be identified. “The committee is examining whether the RIC platform could be used for the delivery of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), public distribution system and other financial services. It will also see if the RIC could be handy for electoral purposes.”

MNREGS, the United Progressive Alliance administration’s flagship welfare programme, ensures 100 days of work a year to every poor household in rural India. RSBY aims to provide health cover to 60 million poor Indians.

Gairola said the committee would submit its report in two months. N.C. Saxena, member of the National Advisory Council (NAC), said there is a complete lack of coordination between the ministries in the Union government.

“They are just duplicating work. Home ministry, finance ministry and UIDAI will end up doing the same. There is a complete confusion at the top level,” he said.

Nandan Nilekan. Photo by Pradeep Gaur/Mint

The RIC programme was launched in India’s nine coastal states after the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. The home ministry is seeking to extend the scheme to the rest of the country and has sought Rs. 6,790 crore to fund the programme. The smart card uses a chip that carries data, photographs and fingerprints of the holder. The home ministry has been projecting the card as the national identity card.
The scheme ran into trouble after it faced stiff opposition from deputy chairman of planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Nandan Nilekani, chairman of UIDAI, and department of electronics and information technology. They objected to the offline verification process of RIC to identify residents and the cost of the project.

Their objections appear to have stemmed from bitter and all-too-public battle between the home ministry and UIDAI over the scope the Aadhaar project that overlapped, in some aspects, with the National Population Register project (NPR).

A compromise was finally reached on 27 January that allowed the scope of UIDAI’s project to be expanded to 600 million and seemingly prevented duplication in the collection of biometric information. The NPR, being put together by the Census department, which falls under the home ministry, will form the basis of the RIC project.

Ironically, the EFC that has met twice over the RIC project, has failed to clear it; EFC approval is required to start a new project. Usually, an EFC takes decision in the first meeting.

In the first EFC meeting in March this year, it was proposed that Aadhaar number, too, will be on the RIC, making it unnecessary for UIDAI to send out letters to enrollees. The EFC meeting, however, remained inconclusive after objections from UIDAI and department of electronics and information technology.

“In the second meet, attempts were made to salvage the RIC project. All potential users were called to attend the meeting to discuss multiple usage of the smart card. Our reading is that expenditure committee is preparing the ground to clear RIC,” said a second government official, who too did not want to be identified.

This will happen at a third EFC meeting that will be called shortly, he added.

Earlier this month, officials from the home ministry visited Malaysia to understand the working of its multipurpose smart identification card. This smart card, named MyKad, incorporates in a single card multiple applications with several sets of personal information about the holder of the card.
sahil.m@livemint.com