The Government of India has made Aadhar card compulsory for filing income tax returns and applying for PAN. The Aadhar has to be linked to your bank accounts and mobile numbers as well. Here’s all you need to know about Aadhar cards.
What is Aadhar?
Aadhar is a 12 digit unique-identity number assigned by the Indian Government to every Indian resident. The Aadhar card is essentially an identification document which contains the Aadhar number.
It was initiated as an attempt towards a single, unique identification document for every Indian resident. It will enable disadvantaged sections of the society that do not have any formal identity document to access services like opening a bank account, obtaining a SIM card etc.
The process of issuing Aadhar card is undertaken by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). The UIDAI collects and verifies the biometrics (fingerprints, iris scan and photograph) and demographic data (name, date of birth, gender, address etc.) of every Indian resident.
The Aadhar number is stored in a centralised database.
What is UIDAI?
The UIDAI is an authority, which was established in the year 2009 to manage Aadhar.
Initially, UIDAI functioned under planning commission. It did not have any statutory backing. Nandan Nilekani was appointed to head the project and was given the position of the chairman of UIDAI.
In 2016, The government passed a bill to provide statutory backing to the UIDAI and to the Aadhar scheme. The bill is called the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) bill. Now the UIDAI functions under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
The bill enables the Government to link Aadhar to various welfare schemes and transfer cash directly to the bank accounts of the intended beneficiaries. It is intended to remove the intermediaries involved in the subsidy delivery mechanism and plug leakages in the system. It also has the potential to weed out fake and ghost beneficiaries.
Aadhar has become an essential part of the JAM trinity. JAM is the acronym which stands for Jan Dhan Yojana-Aadhar-Mobile banking. The JAM trinity will help the Government in the efficient delivery of subsidies.
Aadhar can serve as a powerful tool for social as well as financial inclusion.
The Government could open a large number of accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana because the UIDAI had issued Aadhar cards and hence gave a valid identity to even the marginalised sections of the society.
The Aadhar card is accepted throughout the country. It helps India’s large migrant population living in cities to access various services like opening a bank account, applying for a ration card and gas connection.
(Read: Financial Inclusion and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana Explained)
It has to be noted that Aadhar is not a proof of citizenship. It is issued to every Indian resident. A resident is any person who has stayed in India for 182 days in the preceding year.
In spite of all this, the Aadhar has been mired in controversy since its inception. It raises serious questions about privacy and data security.
- Violation of Privacy: The UIDAI is collecting the biometric data of every individual. Aadhar was proposed as a voluntary service. But, it has become mandatory to avail various Government as well as private sector services. It has raised serious concerns about privacy. In a landmark judgment in August 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right in India. The Supreme Court is yet to decide if Aadhar is an infringement of one’s privacy. All said and done, it is highly unlikely that the Aadhar will be rolled back.
(Read: The Right To Privacy Explained)
- Aadhar can become an instrument to profile individuals and carry out mass surveillance. Privacy issues existed before Aadhar as well. But, Aadhar has linked all databases that were previously stored separately. These databases can be converged to find out personal details like person’s expenditure pattern (linkage to pan card), political affiliations and sexual preferences of an individual. This information can be misused by the authorities to suppress dissent.
- The Aadhar act passed in the year 2016, does not permit UIDAI to share information related to any individual with any third parties except under two circumstances: National security and order of the court. In practice, however, data disclosures well beyond these exceptions have taken place. A study by the Centre for Internet and Society found that nearly 130 million Aadhaar numbers had been published online by four government departments.
- Data theft: It has been made mandatory to link bank accounts, pan card etc. to Aadhar. UIDAI is a repository of all sensitive information. Hence, it is susceptible to data and identity theft. Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Aadhar card details were leaked online. International agencies like CIA can also hack into the system and create a national security threat.
The Aadhar card has often been compared to the Social Security Number (SSN) in the United States. But, there are differences between the two. The SSN has fewer uses and more legal safeguards. Moreover, it does not capture biometric information.
The US started issuing SSN in 1936. It began to be used for various purposes like bank accounts, credit cards, medical records etc. SSN also linked various national databases. It led to an explosion of identity theft. The US had to initiate safeguards way back in 2004. It began to restrict the use of SSN as well.
Even a country like the US could not protect the SSN database from being hacked. Moreover, identity theft is a completely new concept in India as most Government records were not online before.
In spite of the concerns, Aadhar is just an instrument that is capable of invading our privacy. We need to have adequate legal safeguards against it. The threat of privacy infringement will exist even without Aadhar. Even Facebook and Google can collect personal information about us and misuse it.
Hence, we need strong privacy law and an independent regulator to protect our data from theft and misuse.
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References:
There is a privacy concern in AadharCard
SSN is not like our AadharCard