P.J.
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Why Indians should be thankful to SC for killing the Aadhaar
After a messed up three-year process and running through Rs 11,000 crore, the great discovery of a unique identity number for each Indian is practically dumped with the Supreme Court verdict that on Monday disallowed the government from sharing data with the CBI. Moreover, a sting operation by Cobrapost revealed that the process is riddled with holes with practically anybody, even illegal immigrants, can obtain a unique Indian ID by paying bribes.
The main users of the unique ID, also called Aadhaar, were two: biometric data of bonafide Indian citizens (that could have been used by a number of government agencies for a variety of reasons including fight against terror and criminal investigations) and possibility of direct transfer of various subsidies as cash to the beneficiaries. Of course, the Aadhaar authorities haven’t yet said that they would share the biometric data with anyone and even appeared to be against the idea.
The Supreme Court order on Monday was two pronged - one, don’t share biometric data with any third party (say CBI) without the consent of the the registered person (the Indian citizen); and two, don’t exclude anybody any service or benefit because they don’t have an Aadhaar card. In a single stroke, the multibillion dollar project Aadhaar fell flat on its face. So the Aadhaar, as many predicted, becomes a badly produced photo-ID card which has absolutely no extra value that a driving license or passport has. It’s not even as useful as a ration card or a voter ID card because they have specific purposes. Going by what the BJP has said about the card in the past, the whole process is most likely to be scrapped altogether.
Read more at: Why Indians should be thankful to SC for killing the Aadhar | Firstpost
