Activists contest UIDAI chief’s stance on their Aadhaar findings

Contesting the government’s claims on the food security benefits of Aadhaar reaching millions of people as well on privacy issues and terming their findings as “skewed”, activist groups have written a letter to UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey urging him to organise a public discussion on the matter.

In the public platform, “evidence on the impact of biometric authentication and use of Aadhaar in the delivery of public services can be presented in the public domain,” says the letter written by Anjali Bhardwaj, Nikhil Dey, among others belonging to Satark Nagrik Sangathan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Right to Food Campaign and Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan.

The letter is in response to reports quoting Pandey as saying that the findings released by the activists at a press conference “arise from a skewed approach” and “misinterpretations”. He is also said to have declared that “to claim that Aadhaar is responsible for denial is a misconstrued fact presented with malafide intent”.

In the letter, the activists said they had been working long years with socially and economically marginalised communities in rural and urban India and had released documentation and evidence obtained under the RTI Act, interim findings from a field study conducted by IIT Delhi in collaboration with Ranchi University indicating continued quantity fraud, higher transaction costs and hardship as well as exclusion in the PDS in Jharkhand, among other testimonies.

“Had Aadhaar been a means of inclusion, empowerment, anti-corruption and efficiency in delivering entitlements to the poor and marginalised, we would have had no hesitation in presenting what we saw, and congratulating the government for its success,” said the letter, calling upon the UIDAI head to join them in a public dialogue.

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