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Government Introduces Aadhaar Amendment Bill in Lok Sabha

The government on Wednesday introduced an amendment Bill in Lok Sabha to provide legal backing for voluntary seeding of biometric Aadhaar ID with mobile numbers and bank accounts after the Supreme Court barred mandatory use of the 12-digit unique identifier by private firms.

As the opposition raised concerns, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asserted that the proposed amendment is in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment and that there will be no infringement of privacy. He also said that the government has prepared a data protection Bill and it will be introduced in the parliament soon.

“We should not forget that Aadhaar has led to saving of Rs 90,000 crore through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT),” the minister said, adding that multilateral organisations such as World Bank and IMF have hailed Aadhaar as a unique innovation of India.

Objections were raised on the Bill by Shashi Tharoor (Indian National Congress), Saugata Roy (Trinamool Congress) and N.K. Premachandran (Revolutionary Socialist Party). Opposing the Bill, Roy said that the proposed amendments infringe the Supreme Court judgment on the Aadhaar matter. The proposed amendment will circumvent that judgment and it was brought without stakeholders’ consultation, he claimed, adding that “the Bill should not be introduced.”

Tharoor said that the Bill is in violation of the apex court judgment. “The Bill is premature because first, we need enactment of data protection law,” he said asking “where is the draft” of the data protection law.

“The Bill must be withdrawn and revised,” he added. Endorsing these views, Premachandran alleged that the Bill infringes the right of privacy. The minister said these objections are “misplaced” and “we are not violating the Supreme Court judgment.”

“Let me clarify at the outset that the proposed amendment is done in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment. It (linking) is not mandatory at all,” he said. Regarding privacy issue, he said privacy is “not being invaded at all” from these amendments. The parallel authentication norms are there to safeguard privacy issues, he added.

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