Aadhaar mess — what is the way forward?

If the recent Supreme Court verdict on Aadhaar has left ambiguity and confusion in its wake, then there are enough reasons for this. For one, the aim and objective of the unique identity programme was never spelt out in black and white. And then, even eight years after it was launched, there was no clarity on whether enrolment in the national registry was voluntary or mandatory with the government periodically oscillating between compulsory and optional in a befuddled manner. Consequently, the bio-metric and demographic data bank of Indian citizens came to mean different things to different people.

For public consumption, it was ostensibly meant to ensure that subsidies and welfare schemes meant for the poor reached the rightful beneficiaries and were not pilfered by middlemen or by persons faking identities. Big business and start-ups were encouraged to see it as an identity platform to be commercially exploited as part of the Digital India initiative of the government. For citizens, who did not avail themselves of social security programmes, Aadhaar served as an all-weather identity card to be used while opening bank accounts or seeking school admissions for their children.

Hydra headed monster

By its very architecture, Aadhaar was designed as a hydra headed monster which ironically never had a unique identity to call its own. This was primarily because it was marketed as a politically correct pro-poor instrument to mask the underlying commercial agenda waiting to unfold. To make matters worse, when a legal framework was drawn up to give legitimacy to the national identity register in the form of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, it was passed by the government as a Money Bill.

This was done to bypass the Rajya Sabha which would have sought amendments and perhaps questioned the commercial aspects that were being legitimised by the proposed law. But by eschewing discussion in the Upper House and bypassing its approval, the government seems to have scored a self-goal. The Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill was challenged in the Supreme Court which, in a majority verdict, gave its stamp of approval to the Act. However, the judgement in ‘favour’ of the government came with several riders which has been the cause of much discomfort.

While upholding the Aadhaar Act, the apex court held as “unconstitutional” all those sections in the legislation that did not conform to the definition of a Money Bill which is restricted to matters pertaining to taxation and withdrawals from the Consolidated Fund of India. So, Section 57, which validated the “use of the identity number by the state or any corporate or person” was among those provisions that were struck down.

This has spread panic and confusion among lending companies, mobile wallets and other private players who were making use of Aadhaar e-KYC to enrol customers. The big question now is: should they go through the identification process all over again? And what about the Aadhaar data already in their possession? Like these entities, banks which had seeded accounts with Aadhaar numbers will now have to necessarily erase them. So too will mobile service providers, schools, hospitals, insurance companies and several other services which had established Aadhaar linkages.

The apex court, in its judgement, did not address how this massive exercise should be carried out. Neither did it name any agency responsible to ensure this process of invalidation, which, by all accounts, will be a very complex task given the widespread use of Aadhaar identification. As for the government, it is yet to crystalise a solution to the problem.

Also, the majority verdict, surprisingly gave its approval to Aadhaar as an inclusive tool that effectively delivers social welfare programmes to the poor. It brushed aside concerns raised by activists — backed by government data gleaned through the RTI Act — of exclusion, privacy issues and illegal diversion of funds and food supplies.

Further, it gave a clean chit to UIDAI, which administers Aadhaar, for effective collection, authentication and safe storage of biometric data despite glaring evidence of breaches and several instances of it being sold or leaked. Even UIDAI’s admission that 49,000 enrollers were blacklisted was not factored in the majority judgement.

Given all this, what is the way forward? Obviously, there are no quick fix solutions since data compromised will always remain compromised. Perhaps, one option for the government may be to go back to the drawing board and devise a national registry which is secure and addresses privacy concerns effectively. More importantly, it should have a transparent mandate and no hidden agenda — political or commercial.

The writer is a senior Delhi-based journalist

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