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

Monday, August 6, 2012

2688 - Resident ID project clears Aadhaar roadblock - Live Mint

Posted: Mon, Aug 6 2012. 11:45 AM IST

Resident ID project clears Aadhaar roadblock

EFC gives clearance despite objections from UIDAI, department of electronics and information technology
Sahil Makkar

New Delhi: Starting next year, every Indian resident will be given a multi-purpose identity card, with the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) giving its clearance to the home ministry’s ambitious scheme against the objections of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) over verification and other issues.
The home ministry-backed Resident Identity Card (RIC), which will bear the UIDAI’s 12-digit Aadhaar (or unique identification) number, can be used for verifying identity as well as the delivery of various government programmes including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), the public distribution system, and electoral and other financial services.


In the clear: A file photo of an Aadhaar pilot project. RIC was first launched in India’s coastal states after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

MGNREGS, 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.

The EFC, which met for the third time on the issue because of differences within the government, on Thursday approved around Rs.5,500 crore for the project and ruled against the objections raised by the Nandan Nilekani-led UIDAI and DeitY. UIDAI has already issued 180 million Aadhar numbers to the country’s residents.
The EFC usually doesn’t take more than one meeting to arrive at a decision. But after objections from UIDAI and DeitY, Sumit Bose, then expenditure secretary and on Sunday named to the revenue department, appointed a technical committee to examine whether the scope of the RIC scheme could be expanded.
The committee was formed in the last week of April under B.K. Gairola, director general of the National Informatics Centre. The other members included representatives from the Registrar General of India, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, the department of financial services, the Election Commission and the labour ministry.
“The technical committee was appointed with terms and reference to check the feasibility of the RIC in other sectors. The committee gave a go-ahead in the EFC meeting,” said a government official, who declined to be identified. “We will now start issuing of RIC from March next year onwards.” Another official independently confirmed the above.
Home ministry officials visited Malaysia last month to understand how its multi-purpose smart identification card, MyKad, worked. The card incorporates multiple applications with several sets of personal information about the holder.
The RIC programme was first launched in India’s nine coastal states after the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. The home ministry wanted to extend the scheme to the rest of the country and had sought Rs. 6,790 crore to fund the programme. The smart card uses a chip that carries data, photographs and fingerprints. The home ministry has been projecting RIC as a national identity card.
The scheme ran into trouble after it faced stiff opposition from UIDAI chairman Nilekani and DeitY.
They objected to RIC’s offline verification process and the cost of the project.
Their objections appear to have stemmed from the bitter and all-too-public battle between the home ministry and UIDAI over the Aadhaar project overlapping, in some aspects, with the National Population Register (NPR) project. A compromise was finally reached on 27 January that allowed the scope of UIDAI’s project to be expanded to 600 million people and seemingly prevented duplication in the collection of biometric information. NPR, being put together by the census department that comes under the home ministry, will form the basis of the RIC project.
sahil.m@livemint.com


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