Daily Special Current Affairs Material for IAS (Pre) 2013 National Issues - Topic: "Aadhaar"

Chapter: National Issues

Topic: Aadhaar

Q. What are the recommendations/ concerns of ‘Standing Committee on Finance’ for Aadhaar?

There are broadly five important arguments in the SCoF report.

• First, it contains scathing criticism of the government for beginning Aadhaar enrolment without Parliament’s approval for the Bill. Currently, UIDAI enjoys only executive authority, and no statutory authority.

• Secondly, the SCoF raises serious questions about the enrolment process followed for Aadhaar numbers. The issue of Aadhaar numbers “is riddled with serious lacunae,” and this problem can be traced to conceptualisation “with no clarity of purpose” and implementation in “a directionless way with a lot of confusion.” For instance, the Ministry of Finance felt that there was “lack of coordination” across the six agencies collecting personal information, leading to “duplication of efforts and expenditure.” The Ministry of Home raised “serious security concerns” over the introducer model used to enroll persons without any proof of residence.

• The report concludes that the enrolment process “compromises the security and confidentiality of information of Aadhaar number holders,” and has “far reaching consequences for national security.” The reason: “the possibility of possession of Aadhaar numbers by illegal residents through false affidavits/introducer system.”

• Thirdly, the SCoF comes down heavily on the government for proceeding with the project without “enactment of a national data protection law,” which is a “pre-requisite for any law that deals with large-scale collection of information from individuals and its linkages across separate databases.”

• Fourthly, the report strongly disapproves of “the hasty manner” in which the project was cleared. It concludes that a “comprehensive feasibility study…ought to have been done before approving such an expensive scheme.”

• Fifthly, the report tears apart the faith placed on biometrics to prove the unique identity of individuals. It notes that “the scheme is full of uncertainty in technology” and is built upon “untested, unreliable technology.” It criticises the UIDAI for disregarding (a) the warnings of its Biometrics Standards Committee about high error rates in fingerprint collection; (b) the inability of Proof of Concept studies to promise low error rates when 1.2 billion persons are enrolled; and (c) the reservations within the government on “the necessity of collection of IRIS image.”

Q. How many agencies are involved in collecting the information for AADHAR?

There are six agencies collecting personal information for AADHAR.

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