Why this Blog ? News articles in the Wide World of Web, quite often disappear with time, when they are relocated as archives with a different url. Archives in this blog serve as a library for those who are interested in doing Research on Aadhaar Related Topics. Articles are published with details of original publication date and the url.
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, September 30, 2013
4726 - Voluntarily mandatory - The Hindu
4725 - ‘Aadhaar infringes on our fundamental right to privacy’ - The Hindu
4724 - Focus on cash transfer, not target by Reetika Khera - Deccan herald
Yet, over the past few months, especially since December 2012, confusion over whether Aadhaar is compulsory or voluntary has increased, leading to the worst possible outcome - it is turning into a source of exclusion. For instance, in Delhi's rollout of the National Food Security Act (NFSA), people are being told that they must have an Aadhaar card to be included.
For others, Aadhaar has added another layer of bureaucracy to the existing maze - a Dalit friend who got admission into TISS, had to travel from Hyderabad where he works, to his village in Osmanabad, to enrol for Aadhaar, and then to Mumbai to complete his scholarship formalities.
In an Aadhaar-free world, he would have been saved a lot of time and money, and could have managed by only going to Mumbai.
On January 1, 2013, the Delhi government made Aadhaar compulsory for all revenue department services. This department issues income certificates that are necessary to avail of the 25 per cent reservation in private schools (under the Right to Education Act) for poor children. Until an exception clause was added exempting it for income certificates, it created additional hassles for such parents.
The Aadhaar story goes back to 2009 when the UIDAI was set up with Nandan Nilekani as chairman. Unlike a passport that allows you to travel abroad, a voter ID that lets you vote, a ration card which entitles you subsidized rations (and so on), he was only peddling a number (later christened “Aadhaar”) with no tangible benefits. So, why would anyone queue up for it?
The government initially used a "feel good" approach to enthuse people, that Aadhaar was the magic wand that would fix all problems (read corruption) in social welfare programmes. But that false claim was successfully challenged (for example, the PDS turnaround in Chhattisgarh and Odisha happened not with Aadhaar but intelligent use of simpler technology).
Gradually, the government began to resort to subtle arm-twisting techniques. Existing cash transfers, such as pensions and scholarships were repackaged, a slogan, “aapka paisa aapke haath,” was given for DBT , a first step towards making Aadhaar de facto compulsory. An impression was created that DBT was not possible without Aadhaar. The warning, that they were climbing the ladder from the top by implementing DBT without first computerising beneficiary lists or opening accounts with core banking, was ignored.
Nine months later, the minutes of a meeting relating to Aadhar on August 5 in the PMO show that this realisation has finally sunk in. According to these minutes, out of nearly 40 lakh beneficiaries of DBT schemes, 56 per cent have bank accounts, 25 per cent have both accounts and an Aadhar number but less than 10 per cent accounts are seeded with their Aadhar number.
One shudders to think of the fate of those who do not have an account, or whose accounts are not seeded with Aadhaar. The minutes clearly list various bottlenecks to further expansion (“There are many problems and inadequacies that still need to be addressed”, “rollout of core banking is badly behind schedule” etc). Yet, the minutes betray the coercive intention of the government: “It is time to crack the whip and move faster”, the deadline for a switchover “will make people share their details and speed up seeding”.
The government double-speak on whether Aadhaar is compulsory or voluntary has been exposed repeatedly: full page ads in national dailies setting deadlines for seeding Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts for the LPG subsidy appear along with reassurances by minister Rajeev Shukla in Parliament that Aadhaar is not mandatory.
The government should pause to think which of the two objectives is more important - "aapka paisa aapke haath" (DBT) or chasing the target of giving a number to 60 crore people. DBT can proceed without Aadhaar if the government focuses its energy on computerisation and extending core banking services to transfer cash directly into people's accounts. Chasing the latter will require some coercion, thereby causing further disruption and exclusion. The Supreme Court, by preventing Aadhaar from becoming compulsory, is actually doing the government a favour.
(The author is Assistant Professor of Economics, IIT Delhi)
4723 - 'State must notify Aadhaar not mandatory' - TNN
4722 - Aadhar cut down to size, data mining projects raise concerns - New Indian Express
4721 - Suspend Aadhaar, it is leading India to a surveillance state - Deccan Herald
Aadhaar envisages a centralised database of Indian residents. At present, the data on each individual is available only in separate “silos” and it is near impossible to link a person’s information in one silo to that in another. A unique ID number opens up this possibility. An invasive government, a profit-minded private entity or a hostile group can get hold of personal data in more than one silo. Such data could be linked up to create a profile of individuals as well as track them for life. This constitutes an assault on a very basic freedom enjoyed by each individual.
Very few countries have national databases of citizens allowing convergence across silos. In most countries where such projects were introduced, such as the United States or United Kingdom, citizens reacted collectively to the threats of intrusion into their democratic rights. They argued that the data collected may be misused for a variety of dubious purposes. Legislations on privacy have not been seen as satisfactory guarantees against functionality creep.
Privacy is no “western” import into India. The idea of privacy is well-embedded in the history of all Indian cultures. The Supreme Court of India has inferred the right to privacy from the explicit guarantee of personal liberty in Article 21 of the Constitution.
4720 - ‘Don’t harass kids over Aadhar’ - Asian Age
Jayant Jain, president, Forum for Fairness in Education, said that they had been receiving complaints from parents across the city. “While the Supreme Court as well as various high courts in the country have ruled that Aadhar cards cannot be made mandatory, I wonder why the schools resort to such threats. It seems they have an ulterior motive,” he said.
T.M. Dongre, education inspector, north zone, said that ever since the start of the academic year, the department had not come out with any circular pertaining to Aadhar cards being made compulsory. “Parents should ask for a copy of the circular if the school claims that it is from the department. If the school refuses, the parents should contact the department or the education inspector. Strict action will be initiated against the school,” said Mr Dongre.
4719 - Aadhaar after the interim order - Telegraph India
- What the Supreme Court order on Monday means for the card scheme
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Do I still need an Aadhaar card for LPG subsidy if I live in one of the districts chosen for the pilot scheme, which applies from October 31 with a grace period of three months till January 31?
There is no clarity yet. The decision will be voluntary, not mandatory, if the Supreme Court's interim order is upheld in the final ruling. But the Centre said on Tuesday that there was no change in its pilot scheme. The Centre said it would move the court seeking “a correction” of Monday’s interim order. It added that efforts would be made to pass a related bill in the winter session. Petroleum minister Veerappa Moily said the planned rollout of the Aadhaar-based cash subsidy payout to cooking gas consumers would continue as planned. The minister did not elaborate and he probably meant that the government would not make any change till the final order and the fate of the bill in the winter session were known. As matters stand now, the government cannot insist that you have to have the card to obtain benefits such as LPG subsidy
Is the Supreme Court order interim or final?
Interim. But the court has sufficiently indicated that it is not in favour of making the Aadhaar card mandatory for obtaining benefits when no legislation has been enacted for the purpose. The Centre had also categorically told the court that enrolment for the Aadhaar scheme was voluntary. What is not clear is whether various agencies such as oil companies can make the card number mandatory for providing the subsidy. According to the current plan, the oil companies will deposit the subsidy in the consumers’ bank accounts and the government will reimburse the companies
When is the next hearing?
The court has not set any specific date. In normal course, the case may come up for hearing after four to six weeks
Will Aadhaar cards be issued in the interlude?
Yes. There is no embargo from the court on issuing the cards. For residents, enrolment is voluntary, not mandatory
Is there any point in having the Aadhaar card if it is not linked to the direct benefit scheme?
Aadhaar means foundation. It is the base on which a delivery system can be built. The question is whether the card, the enrolment to which is voluntary, can be made mandatory for obtaining the benefits. Aadhaar can be used in any system that needs to establish the identity of a beneficiary
Is the Aadhaar a citizenship card?
No. It only suggests that the cardholder is a resident of India
Why did the court say it should not be given to any illegal immigrant?
Strictly speaking, the Aadhaar scheme does not differentiate between illegal immigrants and citizens. You can go to any authorised Aadhaar enrolment centre anywhere in India with your identity and address proof. The centres accept 18 types of proof of identity and 33 categories of proof of address. The objective is to provide identification numbers to facilitate access to benefits and services for individuals residing in India and who are entitled to such benefits. An element of ambiguity has crept in because the draft bill refers to “individuals residing in India and to certain other classes of individuals”
Compiled by Basant Kumar Mohanty and R. Balaji
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4718 - AADHAAR’S IDENTITY CRISIS - News Laundry
4717 - Show your cards - The Indian Express
4716 - DBT scheme's future bleak; UID making agency stops functioning - Hindustan Times
Without the Aadhaar cards, a mandatory to avail subsidy, the beneficiaries are left in dark.
There seems no end to the controversies surrounding UPA government's ambitious project 'UID'. Out of the total 367412 LPG beneficiaries in the district only 47588 (13% of total) have got their Aadhaar cards and bank accounts linked. While others are left in the lurch, as the outsourced agency's contract ended on Friday. With no machines functioning, the making of card has come to standstill.
Bharat gas agency manager Gyanak Singh said at the agency 1800 customers had deposited their forms; however, only 500 forms had been collected by the bank.
4715 - RBI asks banks to bear the cost of deploying e-KYC of Aadhaar - MoneyLife
Although the Supreme Court has ruled that Aadhaar number from Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is not necessary for essential services, several government agencies are enforcing it on helpless citizens. Going a step further the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is asking banks to bear the cost for deploying electronic-know your customer (e-KYC) launched by UIDAI.
4714 - Is Aadhaar the way for welfare payouts? - No Says Nikhil Dey Yes Says A.Srinivas - Hindu Business Line
4712 - Narender Modis Tweets on Aadhaar
- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
Were all states on board on Aadhaar?But you spent so much money just to show political colours and you need to answer nation for that:Modiji
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
When SC has raised these points, PM must tell nation, were all his departments, Cabinet Ministers were on board: Narendra Modi
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
What SC raised today, I raised 3 years ago. I said call a National Security Card meet, consult CMs but he did nothing: Narendra Modi
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
I said Gujarat is a border state if you keep dolling out Aadhaar cards like this then illegal immigrants will get upper hand: Narendra Modi
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
I am placing one thing for the 1st time- For the last 3 years I am raising issues on Aadhaar card: Narendra Modi http://www.narendramodi.in/liveevent/social/index.html …
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
Nation wants to know how much money was spent on Aadhaar card? Who gained from it? What about the questions the SC raised: Narendra Modi
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- narendramodi_in @narendramodi_in 26 Sep
2 days ago a SC judgement came on Aadhaar, on which the Congress was dancing to the people. SC rebuked them: Narendra Modi
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4711 - Not-so-unique recipe for disaster - DNA
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Aadhaar, with several loopholes, has become an embarrassment for the government
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On September 23, two judges of the Supreme Court directed that “no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card”. Why did the court need to say this?
In 2009 and 2010, when the project had just been launched, enrolment was promoted as being voluntary. It was marketed as a convenience for those who already had other forms of identity; and a boon to those without any identity document, with the poor as the primary constituency. It was presented as a means to practise ‘inclusion’, that is, those for whom benefits and subsidies had been out of reach because they had no means of identifying themselves to the State and other private entities would now have an identity.
Yet, the small print, even then, was saying something else. In April 2010, the Strategy Overview document of the UIDAI read: “UID will not be mandated: The UIDAI approach will be a demand-driven one, where the benefits and services that are linked to the UID will ensure demand for the number. This will not, however, preclude governments or Registrars from mandating enrolment.” So, making the UID mandatory was intended; only, the UID would work on, and with, Registrars to introduce the element of compulsion. This allowed the UIDAI to keep talking about ‘inclusion’, while governments and their departments would be egged on to bully people into enrolling for a UID on threat of exclusion from services. Take the proposed linking up between the UID and the PDS in a UIDAI document titled (no marks for guessing) UID and PDS. “To support enrolment, the central government will mandate that the UID numbers of each family member should be recorded in the ration card and the data base should be made available” to the UIDAI. That is quite unambiguous! Its document titled UID and Public Health has this: “Every citizen must have a strong incentive or a “killer application” to go and get herself a UID, which one could think of as a demand side pull. The demand side pull needs to be created de novo or fostered on existing platforms by the respective ministries. Helping various ministries visualise key applications that leverage existing government entitlement schemes such as the PDS and the NREGA will (1) get their buy-in into the project (2) help them roll out mechanisms that generate the demand pull....”. These are documents that have been around since 2009-10, and the UIDAI has been hard at work getting governments and agencies to link the UID number to all manner of services. Why does it matter that the UID is made mandatory? One, there is yet no law that covers this project. The UIDAI has been saying that should not matter because they were set up by an executive order, and that should be quite enough. That is a wholly questionable proposition, and it is, in fact, under challenge in court. But, the fact that a law was in fact introduced in Parliament in December 2010, and the Standing Committee on Finance rejected it in a scathing report that asked that both the project and the law be sent back to the drawing board, cannot be glossed over. There is also no law protecting privacy; the idea of data about individuals being the new property is helped by trivialising the right to privacy. Then, there is a startling fact that too few people have recognised: biometrics, which the UIDAI has been claiming can uniquely identify every individual, had not been tested when the project began. The decision was made on assumptions. This is not just a hypothesis. Take a look at this: In a ‘notice inviting applications for hiring of biometrics consultant’ issued by the UIDAI in January/February 2010, the UIDAI admitted complete ignorance about the effectiveness of biometrics: “there is a lack of a sound study that documents the accuracy achievable on Indian demographics (that is, larger percentage of rural population) and in Indian environmental conditions (that is, extremely hot and humid climates and facilities without air-conditioning). In fact, we do not have any credible study assessing the achievable accuracy in any of the developing countries.... The ‘quality’ assessment of fingerprint data (in the UIDAI’s ‘preliminary assessment’) is not sufficient to fully understand the achievable de-duplication accuracy.” It was in this state of ignorance that the decision to make biometrics the ‘unique’ factor was made. Today, three years later, it has become evident that old people and the poor are facing hurdles in authenticating themselves through biometrics. The UIDAI’s own authentication reports reveal how flawed the system is. More recently, the UIDAI has been talking of thousands of permanent enrolment stations, and people are advised to periodically re-enrol their fingerprints and iris. This is the first admission that biometrics are not forever, and that they change. Yet, the project refuses to pause. Making the UID mandatory in a system that cannot authenticate with any degree of certainty is only a prescription for massive exclusion. Why is no one in government verifying the field situation and asking the tough questions? Direct Benefit Transfer has shown itself to be a mere excuse for making the UID mandatory. In Delhi and Maharashtra, for instance, registering a will or a rent agreement or a sale deed, or getting married, needs a UID. Government servants, and high court judges, in Maharashtra are not to get their salaries unless they are enrolled. In Kerala, children cannot be enrolled in schools. In Delhi, EWS category were threatened with exclusion. Everywhere, gas subsidy is mandatorily linked with the UID number. And the list goes on. It is no wonder that the court was asked to step in to stop this rampant and irresponsible use of a number produced through a deeply defective process. The writer works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights Usha Ramanathan
Today, three years later, it has become evident that old people and the poor are facing hurdles in authenticating themselves through biometrics. The UIDAI’s own authentication reports reveal how flawed the system is
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Published Date: Sep 27, 2013
4710 - No Aadhaar required: Food security experts praise SC order - First Post
4709 - No Aadhaar in Aadhaar cards - Free Press Journal India,
4708 - Aadhaar should not be mandatory, Cong says - TNN
4707 - dna edit: Slipping Aadhaar past Parliament - DNA India
4710 - Aadhaar stalled by S. G. VOMBATKERE - The Hindu
4709 - The man who intends to stop Aadhar in its tracks - Business Standard
This is the first time he has filed a PIL and with that he has shaken one of the most-ambitious programs rolled out by Government of India – the Unique Identification Authority of India.
The Supreme Court on Monday in its interim order said that that this Unique identity can only be issued to those with proven Indian nationality and cannot be mandatory for accessing public services and subsidies.
Referred as ‘Aadhaar’ and started in February 2009, it aims to provide a unique identity (UID) number to all Indians and the authority will maintain a database of residents containing biometric and other data.
Mention biometric and Justice Puttaswamy bristles.
“It is a clear violation of citizens privacy and among various other reasons this program was rejected by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, but still the Government of India went ahead with it. How can this awfully wrong program roll out without a clear legislation,” Puttaswamy argues passionately and on the reasons why he went ahead and filed the PIL for scrapping this project.
"It is a big surprise when the Centre can go ahead with this project when there is no Bill passed in the Parliament. What we want is that the executive and legislature must function within the frame work of the Constitutional provisions so that Government does not circumvent the legislature to avoid discussion, debate and voting in the Parliament and thereby render the legislature redundant or purposeless," he explained.
Puttaswamy along with a few like-minded people felt that it is time that ‘Aadhar’ has to be changed how it is being rolled out and hence moved the PIL in the Supreme Court.
“It is a very difficult proposition to get a PIL admitted in SC. The SC will not admit any sundry PILs and it is indeed heartening that SC admitted and we got the interim order yesterday,” Puttaswamy told Business Standard.
He said that what is more worrying from the ‘Aadhar’ project that is being pushed in as mandatory for accessing some of the essential services and that should not happen.
A man of immense integrity right through his career starting from 1952 in the Old Mysore Court in Karnataka, Puttaswamy has lived a sparkling career.
He was the Government of Karnataka counsel for over a decade during which he argued on various state development issues, but never took a leaning towards any political affiliations or ambitions.
People close to Puttaswamy hold him in high regard and say that there is not a single blemish on him during his career as an advocate or even post his retirement, when he was Vice Chairman of Central Administrative Tribunal, Bangalore Bench, Bangalore , Chairman of Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal, Hyderabad and also Chairman, Andhra Pradesh Backward Class Commission.
4707 - Government to approach Supreme Court for 'correction' of Aadhaar order
4706 - Press Release- Supreme Court exposes complicity of Congress and opposition parties on 12 digits Biometric Aadhaar/UID Number
Supreme Court exposes complicity of Congress and opposition parties on 12 digits Biometric Aadhaar/UID Number
States must withdraw from MoUs they signed with UIDAI
Negative coalition of bankers and surveillance technology companies rearing its heads against citizens’ rights
September 2, 2013: Supreme Court has exposed the ulterior motives behind ‘voluntary’ 12 digits Biometric Aadhaar/ Unique Identification (UID) Number for creating a Central Identities Data Registry (CIDR) of ‘usual residents’ of India and for "doing government process re-engineering" through its order dated September 23, 2013. The questionable intentions of Planning Commission’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) face yet another legal and constitutional scrutiny. UIDAI has failed in the earlier examinations. Indian National Congress, non-Congress parties and the opposition parties appear complicit in the unconstitutional, illegal and illegitimate exercise because they failed to demand its scrapping and maintained silence when in breach of trust Congress ruled states and centre attempted to make it mandatory.
It may be recollected that Punjab and Haryana High Court bench headed by Chief Justice A K Sikri passed an order on March 2, 2013 after hearing a matter challenging a circular making Aadhaar mandatory. The moment Court raised questions of laws, the circular was withdrawn by the central government. The decision underlined that UIDAI is legally assailable and indefensible.
UIDAI and related projects treats every Indian as a subject of surveillance unlike UK which abandoned a similar project (that used to be cited by Wipro Ltd in promotion of UID) because it is "untested, unreliable and unsafe technology” and the” possible risk to the safety and security of citizens.” It was recorded by Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Finance that submitted a report to both the Houses of Parliament on December 13, 2011 trashing the biometric identification project and the post facto legislation to legalize UIDAI and its acts of omission and commission since January 28, 2009
till the passage of The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010. Notably, UK Home Secretary explained that they were abandoning the project because it would otherwise be 'intrusive bullying' by the state, and that the government intended to be the 'servant' of the people, and not their 'master'.
The silence of Wipro Ltd which had prepared the ‘Strategic Vision on the UIDAI Project’ document and submitted to the processes committee of the Planning Commission set up in July 2006 is deafening. This document too seems to be missing from public domain.
Supreme Court order vindicates the Punjab and Haryana High Court order, PSC report and the Statement of Concern dated September 28, 2010 issued by 17 eminent citizens including Justice VR Krishna Iyer, Prof Romila Thapar, SR Sankaran, Justice AP Shah, KG Kannabiran, Bezwada Wilson, Aruna Roy and Prof Upendra Baxi seeking halting of the project. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation is also seized with the compliant on “Subordinate Legislation for Biometric Identity Card NRIC and Aadhhar/UID IS illegal & illegitimate and Constitutional, Legal, Historical & Technological Reasons Against UID/Aadhaar Scheme on 18.3.2013."
State Governments especially those ruled by non-Congress party are so deaf they do not seem to hear even when the verdict shouts. In the aftermath of Supreme Court’s order State Governments must withdraw from the MoU they signed with UIDAI.
All the non-Congress ruled States are opposed to National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) citing erosion of State’s autonomy but quite strangely so far they have failed to see the link between CIDR, National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) and Sam Pitroda’s Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations (PIII) which are part of the same political culture that leaves intelligence agencies beyond the ambit of legislative scrutiny.
The entire issue is quite grave because the genocidal idea of biometric identification is linked with the holocaust witnessed in Germany. Such identification exercises have rightly been abandoned in UK, Australia, China, USA and France. Notably, Nandan Nilekani has admitted, "To answer the question about what is the biggest risk" of centralized database of biometric identification, he said "in some sense, you run the risk of creating a single point of failure also" in his talk at the World Bank in Washington on April 24, 2013. No one knows who would be held legally liable for such failures. Who is being
held accountable for leakage of data from UIDAI at present?
Notably, World Bank’s President who introduced Nilekani at the lecture expressed his patronage for the project. It is not surprising given the fact that essentially it is part of its eTransform Initiative launched in April 2010 for 14 developing countries in partnership with transnational companies like L1, IBM and governments of France and South Korea.
It is the inevitability of such failure that led to the exterminationof a large human population in Germany in the 1940s. In the case of
CIDR and linked initiatives it is not the failure instead convergence of data, tracking, profiling, tagging and the violation of norms of privacy is embedded in its design. Nilekani explained at his lecture at the Bank, "First of all, this is not an ID card project. There is no card. There is a number. It's a virtual number on the cloud, and we don't give a physical card. We do send you a physical letter with your number, which you keep in your pocket, but the real value of this is the number on the cloud". The biometric number is an identifier which is used to "authenticate" and verify whether or not the person is what the person claims to be. The ridiculous thing about the Congressmen in general and supporters of the project in particular is that they do not even know as to what is aadhaar? On January 31, 2013, it came to light that members of Union Cabinet were unaware as whether it is a number or a card. Instead of facing the issue upfront, a Group of Ministers was set up to resolve it but no one knows whether it has been resolved.
It also reflects how undemocratic Indian National Congress is. The decision to impose biometric aadhaar number was autocratically and unilaterally decided without taking consent from even its own party members who are then expected to defend this indefensible project. Nilekani has misguided the party in this regard.
Almost five years of advertising and marketing by UIDAI with help of a negative coalition of bankers, biometric technology companies and a section of mainstream media that holds rights of citizens in contempt created an illusion among the uninformed citizenry that what
pre-existing 15 identity proofs could not do, this illegitimate and illegal biometric identifier will be able to do.
The advocates and supporters of biometric identification who are part of the negative coalition that unconditionally and blindly supports linking of fish baits for trapping the poor in the biometric database are game for turning the all the Indians into guniea pigs for an experiment that has resulted in incineration of human beings in the past. The fact of this experimentation is revealed from what Nandan Nilekani said in his speech at the Centre for Global Development,
Washington. He said, “Our view was that there was bound to be opposition. That is a given…we said in any case there is going to be a coalition of opponents. So is there a way to create a positive coalition of people who have a stake in its success? So, one of the big things here is that there is a huge coalition of, you know, organisations, governments, banks, companies, others who have a stake now in its future. So, create a positive coalition that has the power to overpower or deal with anyone who opposes it.” Positive coalition of progressive political parties, peoples’ movements and informed citizens must expose the collaborators of undemocratic biometric technology companies, bankers and NGOs and give a befitting reply to them. They lost in UK, Australia, China, France and USA; they will lose in India too.
Nilekani’s method of reasoning is a case study, he says, "We came to the conclusion that if we take sufficient data, biometric data of an individual, then that person's biometric will be unique across a billion people. Now we have to find that out. We haven't done it yet. So we'll discover it as we go along" on April 23, 2013.
before, so we are going to find out soon whether it will work or not”. No one can tell as to what is his premise and what is the inference or how is inference is deduced from the premise he has articulated.
Notably, the Strategy Overview document of the UIDAI said that "enrolment will not be mandated" but added, "This will not, however, preclude governments or registrars from mandating enrolment". It must be noted that Nandan Nilekani headed several committees whose
recommendations made Aadhaar mandatory.
Tricked by the marketing blitzkrieg, some political parties are wary of taking a position that would appear to be against pro-poor schemes not realizing that come what may the real beneficiary of this biometric identification is UIDAI which wants to meet its target of 60 crores of Indians by 2014.
Amidst leakage of files from the Prime Minister’s office and leakage of public money in scam after scams in the Indian National Congress led Government, the claim of attempting to reduce leakage in the system by using questionable plumbers like Nilekani does not inspire even an iota of confidence. Nilekani admitted at his lecture the Centre for Global Development in Washington in April 2013 that UIDAI has "created huge opportunity for fingerprint scanners, iris readers".
The purchase of these machines with money is also a leakage that merits probe. Leakage can be plugged by rigorous implementation of Right to Information Act and decentralization of decision making instead of adopting a centralization approach and technological quick fixes.
The entire Indian and international media was taken for a ride regarding a so called turf war between the Ministry of Home Affairs and UIDAI which media was made to understand that got resolved by diving the Indian population in two parts of 61 crore and 60 crore for coverage under National Population Register (NPR) which also generates Aadhaar number and UIDAI. The fact is the terms of reference of the UIDAI mandated it "take necessary steps to ensure collation of National Population Register (NPR) with UID (as per approved strategy)", to "identify new partner/user agencies", to "issue necessary instructions to agencies that undertake creation of databases… (to) enable collation and correlation with UID and its partner databases" and UIDAI “shall own and operate the database". The executive notification dated January 28, 2009 that set up UIDAI mentions this. The entire exercise appears to have been stage managed.
Nilekani has recommended Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for the "unique identification" of vehicles. If the real motive is not surveillance then how is that UIDAI Chairman wears several hats like an intelligence person to undertake unauthorized and illegitimate tracking.
On June 29, 2013, Nilekani reportedly revealed that they were in preliminary discussions with embassies to use the UID number to “simplify visa application procedures”. Isn’t passport a sovereign document? Notably, Nilekani refers to Aadhaar as akin to internal passport. For passport, there is Passport Act, under what Act is this ‘internal passport’ being promoted?
Supreme Court order must be looked at in the light of what of Government of India’s approach paper on privacy states. It says, “Data privacy and the need to protect personal information is almost never a concern when data is stored in a decentralised manner. Data that is maintained in silos is largely useless outside that silo and consequently has a low likelihood of causing any damage. However, all this is likely to change with the implementation of the UID Project.
One of the inevitable consequences of the UID Project will be that the UID Number will unify multiple databases. As more and more agencies of the government sign on to the UID Project, the UID Number will become the common thread that links all those databases together. Over time, private enterprise could also adopt the UID Number as an identifier for the purposes of the delivery of their services or even for enrolment as a customer. Once this happens, the separation of data that currently exists between multiple databases will vanish.” On this ground alone, the project should be abandoned as it concerns not only the present generation but future generations as well.
It is noteworthy that Attorney General of India had submitted to the Parliamentary Committee that UIDAI will function only till the passage of the UID Bill. The Bill was not passed. Now the UIDAI should seize to exist because it is legally invalid. How can a notification of Planning Commission be deemed legally valid when even the ordinance issued by the President of India become invalid if the Bill is not passed within six months.
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) has been pursuing a campaign against the biometric based Unique Identification (UID)/Aadhaar
Number, National Population Register (NPR), National Intelligence Grid
(NATGRID), National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID) and Direct Cash Transfer since 2010. It had appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance that trashed the UID Bill on December 13, 2011 in its report to the Parliament. It was an applicant before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which in an order date December 27, 2012 addressed to Secretary, Union Ministry of Home Affairs communicated human rights concerns regarding UID and RFID submitted to it by CFCL. CFCL is an applicant before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Subordinate Legislation. CFCL is also an applicant before the Press Council of India on the complicity of some media organizations in the matter of enrolment for legally questionable biometric identification.
For Details: Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL),
Mb: 09818089660, 08227816731, E-mail:gopalkrishna1715@gmail.com