Bengaluru: Amidst controversy of 12 digits Biometric identification by UIDAI Adhaar’s security still unsettled, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad expressed he personally does not feel safe to link Adhaar with voter-id cards.
While addressing an event the IT Minister said, “I am not saying this as an IT minister… My personal opinion is Aadhaar should not be linked with the voter ID card.”
He said the Government is not willing to accept that it is spying on citizens “If we do this, our detractors will say, ‘PM Narendra Modi is snooping on us to know what we eat, which movie we are watching’ and so on. I don’t want that to happen,” the minister said.
The EPIC card has been linked with the web portal of the Election Commission of India and you will get election-related information such as your polling booth and its address. Aadhaar is not related to this,” he said.
But the Minister, however, added that linking Adhaar with bank accounts will bring in transparency in helping the needy people benefit through direct benefit transfer (DBT), TOI reported.
“There is a clear difference between the Aadhaar of Modi and the Aadhaar of Manmohan Singh. While Singh’s Aadhaar had no support of law, Modi’s Aadhaar is backed by law, and security and privacy are completely ensured,” he said.
The Minister had also highlighted that so far nearly 80 crore mobile numbers have already been linked with Adhaar as part of Centre’s JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) trinity.
“Once former PM Rajiv Gandhi had said that of the one rupee spent by the government for welfare of the downtrodden, only 15 paise reach the needy. Now, if the government sends Rs 1,000, it directly gets deposited in the bank account of the beneficiary,” he added.
Though he personally does not feel it right to link Adhaar with voter Id card the Minister surely does support linking of Adhaar with other accounts to bring in transparency in to the system.
He said, “If you want to travel by train, you have to buy ticket online for which you have to give data. If you don’t want to give data, then take a bicycle. If you want to eat at a restaurant, you will get an electronically-generated invoice and people will know what you have eaten. But the government respects privacy and the data is perfectly secure,” he said.
Adding that the government would not tolerate any unauthorized use of data for abuse.
Guess what has the Minister got to say on rumours of Addhar data breach doing rounds.