Dhananjay Mahapatra| TNN | Nov 4, 2017, 02:13 IST
HIGHLIGHTS
- The Centre said over 12.64 crore bank accounts were opened using Aadhaar-based e-KYC.
- The country’s biggest employment mechanism for daily wagers under MGNREGA too saw a surge in use of Aadhaar.
- The government added that linking of Aadhaar with PAN had helped in ensuring “one PAN to one person”.
Representative image
NEW DELHI: Bombarding the Supreme Court with statistics to convince it about ease of doing day-to-day activities with Aadhaar, the Centre said 118.64 crore Indians, which is 88% of the population, had obtained Aadhaar and they used it 1,216.8 crore times for authentication purposes.
"As of today, the total number of Aadhaar-based authentication is 12,168,022,172. Therefore, the Indian population has used Aadhaar-based authentication over 1,216 crore times to authenticate their identities and avail benefits and services under the Aadhaar Act and/or other laws," the Centre said in its affidavit filed through advocate Zoheb Hossain.
Challenging the petitioners' constant complaint that linking of biometrics collected through Aadhaar to banking and other services was a violation of right to privacy, the Centre said over 12.64 crore bank accounts were opened using Aadhaar-based e-KYC. "Over 54.25 crore bank accounts have been seeded with Aadhaar as of October 15. Of the newly-opened 30.54 crore Jan Dhan accounts, over 18.97 crore accounts have used Aadhaar," it said.
The country's biggest employment mechanism for daily wagers under MGNREGA too saw a surge in use of Aadhaar, according to statistics provided by the Centre. "Over 9.54 crore active MGNREGA workers of the existing database of 10.93 crore active workers have seeded their Aadhaar numbers and are receiving their daily wages directly in their bank accounts," it said.
"Of a total 2.83 crore pensioners, 1.48 crore have linked Aadhaar to receive pension directly in bank accounts. Over 1.36 crore residents got passport based on Aadhaar authentication. Over 50 crore SIM cards have been issued using Aadhaar e-KYC service. All these are empirical evidence of the working of Aadhaar and is proof of a robust system of financial inclusion and reliability, which gives confidence to people to adopt the system and use it on a large scale," the Centre said.
It added that the petitioners had failed to consider that "total recorded savings to the government of India from just one scheme — direct benefit transfer — on account of Aadhaar was Rs 57,029 crore in three years, 2014 to 2017. "Therefore, there is a clear public interest in ensuring that various benefits, subsidies and services being offered by the government should reach intended beneficiaries and not to fakes and duplicates, which proliferate the system leading to loss of crores of rupees of public money," the Centre said.
The government said linking of Aadhaar with PAN had helped in ensuring "one PAN to one person". "As many as 11.35 lakh cases of duplicate and fraudulent PAN have been detected and accordingly such PANs have been deleted/deactivated. Out of this, around 10.52 lakh cases pertain to individual cases," the Centre said.
"Fake PANs have facilitated enormous growth of shell companies, which were being used for layering of funds and illegal transfer of such funds to other companies/persons or parked abroad in the guise of remittances against import. The share capital of these shell companies are subscribed by fake shareholders through numerous bank accounts with use of fake PAN cards at the initial stage," it said.
TOP COMMENT
I may sound sarcastic but I question what is the meaning of "privacy" or ''Freedom"? In daily life, we do not have freedom even to breath a fresh and clean air. Homes are like match bo... Read More
Sughosh Bansal
The Centre said use of biometrics for establishing identity was not a new phenomenon brought in by Aadhaar.
"Several authorities — for issuance of passport, road transport for driving licences and for property registrations — require biometrics, including fingerprints for issuing relevant documents for verification of identity. For instance, Section 32A of Registration Act mandatorily requires photograph and fingerprints of each buyer and seller where document relates to transfer of ownership of immovable property," it said.
