Aadhaar article No 600
Bibek Debroy
Posted: Tuesday, Sep 28, 2010 at 2346 hrs IST
The Cabinet has approved the National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) Bill and it is expected to be placed before Parliament in the Winter Session. Before reacting, it is still a Bill. It will be referred to a Standing Committee, then passed by both Houses, then receive President’s assent and then be notified. Until then, it isn’t law. There are two strands behind transition towards the UID (unique identity) idea. First, there was a multi-purpose national identity card (MNIC) idea, driven by considerations of security and identified with the NDA government in 2002. This was meant for citizens, not residents. So there can be a national register of citizens (NRC) and a national register of residents (NRR) and the two are not identical.
Under the UPA, UID became equated with the NRR and not NRC. On this difference, UIDAI’s (Unique Identification Authority of India) response will be that it is only the first step and UID (with photographs and biometry) doesn’t create any entitlements. There is nothing to prevent the ministry of home affairs (MHA) from using UID to eventually segregate NRC from NRR. However, that’s not how ministries and the government departments (say, the police) are likely to look at UID. Existence of UID is likely to be looked upon as creating entitlements and establishing citizenship.
Second, under the UPA, UID was driven less by concerns of security and more by intentions of improving efficiency of public expenditure and facilitating e-governance. Even if we don’t identify the poor and target subsidies (outside UIDAI’s mandate), UID can curb fake identity and reduce leakage and corruption. That’s the Aadhar idea. But who has legally authorised Aadhar and UIDAI and allowed it to collect data?
No one, and neither Aadhar nor UIDAI have any constitutional or legal sanction. As of now, they are outside Parliamentary scrutiny, too. A limited objective of the Bill is to provide legal sanctity to UIDAI, to be renamed NIDAI (National Identification Authority of India). But surely such a major exercise should not be based on a narrow and limited agenda. For instance, both tort law and constitutional law protect private data from unlawful intrusion. There must be safeguards on recording inaccurate data, corruption of data, unauthorised access and disclosure, mission creep (where additional features and objectives are bunged into the main database) and profiling. The point is we do not have legislation on privacy and data protection, the civil...
Bibek Debroy
Posted: Tuesday, Sep 28, 2010 at 2346 hrs IST
The Cabinet has approved the National Identification Authority of India (NIAI) Bill and it is expected to be placed before Parliament in the Winter Session. Before reacting, it is still a Bill. It will be referred to a Standing Committee, then passed by both Houses, then receive President’s assent and then be notified. Until then, it isn’t law. There are two strands behind transition towards the UID (unique identity) idea. First, there was a multi-purpose national identity card (MNIC) idea, driven by considerations of security and identified with the NDA government in 2002. This was meant for citizens, not residents. So there can be a national register of citizens (NRC) and a national register of residents (NRR) and the two are not identical.
Under the UPA, UID became equated with the NRR and not NRC. On this difference, UIDAI’s (Unique Identification Authority of India) response will be that it is only the first step and UID (with photographs and biometry) doesn’t create any entitlements. There is nothing to prevent the ministry of home affairs (MHA) from using UID to eventually segregate NRC from NRR. However, that’s not how ministries and the government departments (say, the police) are likely to look at UID. Existence of UID is likely to be looked upon as creating entitlements and establishing citizenship.
Second, under the UPA, UID was driven less by concerns of security and more by intentions of improving efficiency of public expenditure and facilitating e-governance. Even if we don’t identify the poor and target subsidies (outside UIDAI’s mandate), UID can curb fake identity and reduce leakage and corruption. That’s the Aadhar idea. But who has legally authorised Aadhar and UIDAI and allowed it to collect data?
No one, and neither Aadhar nor UIDAI have any constitutional or legal sanction. As of now, they are outside Parliamentary scrutiny, too. A limited objective of the Bill is to provide legal sanctity to UIDAI, to be renamed NIDAI (National Identification Authority of India). But surely such a major exercise should not be based on a narrow and limited agenda. For instance, both tort law and constitutional law protect private data from unlawful intrusion. There must be safeguards on recording inaccurate data, corruption of data, unauthorised access and disclosure, mission creep (where additional features and objectives are bunged into the main database) and profiling. The point is we do not have legislation on privacy and data protection, the civil...
