December 19, 2017
Vivek Gupta makes a Special Mention regarding privacy issues due to Aadhaar
I would like to draw the attention of this House to the mandatory nature of Aadhaar, resultant exclusion of poor and the needy from the benefits of several welfare schemes and the issue of fake Aadhaar cards being printed. From various reports, it has been noted that duplicate Aadhaar cards have been issued to the same persons.
Recently, a case came up in Maharashtra where it was found that names of around 100 farmers were linked to one Aadhaar number. In addition to cases where illegal immigrants were found with an Aadhaar card, a terrorist of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed was also identified with one. This problem exacerbated after this Government mandated that Aadhaar be linked to basic services such as mobile phone or bank account.
Recently, a young girl in Jharkhand starved to death because Aadhaar is mandatory for availing food grains from PDS outlets. Such denial of government benefits is in direct violation of section 7 of the Aadhaar Act. In July, it was found that a major telecom operator who used Aadhaar for SIM activation had its data breached and personal information of over 100 million Indians was leaked.
I urge the Government to follow the Supreme Court’s order of 2013 and make it clear to the public that Aadhaar is voluntary. The Government should also call up stakeholders and find out the flaws in the current UIDAI system, which cause privacy breach and exclusion.
