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, September 30, 2013

4705 - Aadhar & other affiliated cards create confusion & colossal waste of money-Altgaze





Aadhar & other affiliated cards create confusion & colossal waste of money, writes KAVITA CHOPRA
Sep 24, 2013No Commentsby Kavita_Chopra

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance’s (PSCF’s) outburst some time ago on duplication of efforts and wasteful expenditure on provision of identity cards of all sorts to the public might open a can of worms.

PSCF has barely scraped the surface of identity cards scam in its report recommending scrapping of The National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) Bill, 2010. The Committee was perhaps not given all the old records that could have led to recommend categorically scrapping of the much-hyped Aadhar/Unique Identification Number (UID). Alternatively, it could have recommended its merger with the one from which it was aped.  

While recommending reconsideration of unique identification (UID) scheme, PSCF has only implicitly mooted merger of UID/aadhar scheme of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) into National Population Register (NPR). (http://164.100.47.134/lsscommittee/Finance/42%20Report.pdf)

NPR is the gateway for issue of Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) to citizens by Office of Registrar General India (ORGI), a statutory authority under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). It would also be the different coloured cards to residents who are not Indian citizens.   

There is nothing unique about UID. Even the word ‘unique’ is borrowed from the original concept of Rs 10,000-crore Multi-Purpose National Identity Cards (MNICs) project of the Ministry of Home Affairs. (http://censusindia.gov.in/Vital_Statistics/MNIC/MNIC.html)

The objectives for which UIDAI was created in 2009 were already built-in the MNIC project.  Had the UIDAI been set up with formal inter-ministerial consultations leading to preparation of Cabinet Note, one Ministry or the other would have questioned the logic of creating UIDAI which had so far spent Rs 672.91 crore out of its approved outlay of  Rs.3170.32 crore for phase I and II to be implemented over five years. It has reportedly sought approval for phase III with a budget of Rs 14,000 crore!!

It is still not too late to wind up or merge Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is sought to be empowered through the NIAI legislation.
MNIC, which provides a “unique national identification number (NIN)” to citizens, was mooted as a medium for provision of services such as issue of driving licences and entitlements under social welfare schemes. MNICs were conceived as an eventual replacement for the voters identity card/Elector’s photo identify card (EPIC) issued by the Election Commission.

Ideally, EPICs should have been upgraded from conventional physical format to smart cards, which are capable of providing different applications depending on the memory of the chip and the related software.

MNIC project should thus have implemented under Election Commission, which has had the largest database of population. What was needed was weeding out of illegal migrants while upgrading database with biometric information about each voter and prospective voters (14-18 age group).

Had it done that, the Government would have saved thousands of crores of rupees on efforts to issue multiple smart cards that include fishermen’s smart cards in coastal areas issued under MHA’s aegis, ration smart cards issued by States under the public distribution system (PDS), Kisan cards issued by public sector banks and health insurance smart cards issued to below the poverty line (BPL) families under the Union Labour Ministry’s Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY).

If one adds the final, roughly estimated project costs of MNIC, UID and voters identity card, it would easily amount to 40,000 crore, excluding the recurring expenditure on updates and upkeep.

Had the Government decided to have only national identity card to be issued by EC, it would have easily saved Rs 20,000 crore with which it could have opened 20,000 new primary health centres in villages. This is purely a guesstimate as presumptive losses are always very difficult to assess.

According to a proposal mooted several years back by two experts of National Informatics Centre, a multi-purpose smart card named  NISANI (National Identification Scheme As Numbers Individually) which could have replaced the 20 types of popular cards like citizenship, succession, ATM cum debit, electoral role, blood group, PAN, religion, caste, date of birth, date of death, education, eye donor, disability, driving license, gender, own home, domicile, Identity, death & birth registration. (http://mirzapur.nic.in/nisani/abstNISANI.pdf)

According to presentation made by ORGI in 2006, MNIC would have two variants, the India basic card (IBC) and the India premium card (IPC).
IBC, which would be offered free to citizens, would contain certain basic personal information. It would have memory slots reserved for additional information such as caste/tribe status.

IPC would have all the features of IBC and would have larger memory to loading data for provision of services such as e-purse as desired by card-holder.
If MNIC cannot be used as one card for all services, it can certainly be used for single card for exercising franchise, certifying citizenship and for E-payment of entitlements available under different schemes.
Had the Government not goofed up and had the MNICs not been delayed for several years, subsidy leakages running into several thousand crore of rupees would have been avoided.

More importantly, the hapless Aam Aadami would not have wasted time and effort in submitting same numerical and biometric information time and again to different agencies. No value is, however, ever attached to time foregone by citizens due to bad governance in the country.

Had PSCF been given access to all official documents on all identity cards, it would have in all probability proposed merger of UID, NIN and EPIC into a single national identity card, thereby breathing life into the concept of one country, one citizen, one card. (http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/sim09/Speakers/Tanmoy_Chakraborty.pdf)

One can cite more information available in the public domain to prove the goof-ups on multiple, statutory identities, resulting wastage of thousands of crores of public money. It remains to be seen whether the Government would muster courage to ask the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to calculate both the real and presumptive losses underlying the plethora of identity cards planned/doled out by different government entities.

When ORGI was bracing to roll out MNIC pilot project through a consortium of three public enterprises, ITI, BEL and ECIL, in 2006, the seeds of UID were being conceived in the Department of Information Technology (DIT). By the way, none of the three public enterprises come under DIT’s turf.
DIT sought administrative approval for the project –”Unique ID for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families” in March 2006. Later this proposal was developed further by a committee headed by a senior official of the Planning Commission. The Committee plugged for setting up of UIDAI through an executive order under the aegis of the Planning Commission. (http://uidai.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141&Itemid=164)

Later, the Committee’s proposal was referred to an empowered group of ministers to consider, among other things, collating UIDAI with MNIC project. Instead of disapproving UIDAI, EGOM approved setting up of UIDAI in 2008. Thus was born UIDAI in January 2009 without Cabinet approval and without any legal sanctity which is now to be acquired through PSCF-trashed NIAI Bill.


The great mess over national identity cards has happened in spite of administrative reforms and transparency vigorously pursued by the UPA Government.