Secretary General, Rajya Sabha's Ignorance About Legislative Process On Biometric Aadhaar
By Gopal Krishna
31 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org
To
Hon'ble Chairman
Rajya Sabha
Parliament of India
New Delhi
Subject-Secretary General, Rajya Sabha's ignorance about legislative process on biometric aadhaar
Sir,
I wish to draw your immediate attention towards the recommendations of
the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance in its report
presented to the Lok Sabha and laid it in Rajya Sabha and a
Parliamentary Bulletin Part-II dated December 18, 2014 regarding
“AADHAAR (UIDAI) enrolment camp which was set up exclusively for the
Members of Parliament who have not been enrolled as yet” published
under the signature of Secretary General, Rajya Sabha. This seems to
be an act of ignorance regarding the legislative process on aadhaar by
the Secretary General, Rajya Sabha. The enrolment camp continued till
December 23.
I submit that such exercise of power by the office bearers of
Parliament in order to facilitate world’s largest biometric database
appears unprecedented. It is likely to be deemed as an act of
institutional subversion by the experts of parliamentary processes,
conventions and future generations. The creation of this database is
linked to World Bank’s eTransform Initiative with several undemocratic
transnational companies and is illegally and illegitimately being
linked to electoral database, Census and National Population Register.
I submit that this appears to be aimed at appeasing US President Shri
Barack Obama who is the chief guest on the republic day. The republic
is apparently being put under surveillance through the universal
aadhaar coverage, Shri Obama's interest in aadhaar is quite known. Not
surprisingly, President Obama visited an Aadhaar enrolment station in
Mumbai in 2010 during his last visit to India. His delegation included
the CEO of L1 Identities Solution, then a US MNC (now a subsidiary of
Safran Group, a French company with French Govt’s stake in it).
I submit that the URL on Planning Commission’s Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI)’s website that provided this news President
Obama Visits Aadhaar enrolment station - UIDAI
uidai.gov.in/images/FrontPageUpdates/obama_uid/barak_obama.html has
been disabled for some reason. Wikileaks had revealed that US agencies
are closely monitoring the implementation of the project.
There is the URL about President of the United States of America Shri
Barack Obama visiting Aadhaar enrolment station at Innovation Forum
http://uidai.gov.in/images/news/obama_uid/barak_obama.html URL, this
too has been disabled. Government must explain as to why this URL for
Obama’s visit has been disabled. Hopefully, only the URL has been
disabled and not the eyes and ears of the republic.
I submit that Shri Srikanth Nadhamuni accompanied Shri Obama when he
visited an Aadhaar enrolment station. Nadhamuni was Head of
Technology, UIDAI since its inception in 2009, right from conceptual
stage to designing and building the biometric based UID system for
uniquely identifying residents of India till October 2012. He helped
setup the UIDAI’s Technology Centre at Bangalore which has developed
the UIDAI system with the help of technology development
partners/vendors as well as sabbatical and volunteer members from the
corporate sector. He was also member of the eGovernance core
committee, Government of Karnataka. It was not clear as to why he left
UIDAI midway.
A release of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on behalf of the
Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs stated that Lok Sabha Speaker Smt
Sumitra Mahajan inaugurated Aadhaar registration of Members of
Parliament in the Parliament House on December 11, 2014. The Speaker
got herself registered first by filling the necessary forms and
getting photographed. Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State for
Parliamentary Affairs registered for issue of aadhaar. The camp was
organized by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in association with
the Secretariats of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha from December 11, 2014
till December 17, 2014. Subsequently, it was extended till December
23.
I submit that Shri Anoop Mishra, Secretary General, Lok Sabha, Shri
Afzal Amanullah, Secretary (Parliamentary Affairs) and Shri V.K.Madan,
Director General, Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) who is
also officiating as the Chairman were present on the occasion of
inaugural.
This exercise has made a mockery of the legislative process and the
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance which noted that the
Government has “admitted that (a) no committee has been constituted to
study the financial implications of the UID scheme; and (b)
comparative costs of the aadhaar number and various existing ID
documents are also not available.” In view of such glaring omissions,
the Committee denounced the UID/aadhaar project as `unethical and
violative of Parliament's prerogatives' and as akin to an ordinance
when the Parliament is in session.
It must be recalled that The National Identification Authority of
India Bill, 2010 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 3rd December,
2010. The Speaker, Lok Sabha in consultation with the Chairman, Rajya
Sabha referred the Bill to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Finance. The Standing Committee presented the Report to the Lok Sabha
and laid it in Rajya Sabha on 13th December 2011.
The Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has
specifically raised questions about the legality of the collection of
biometrics while creating a citizen/resident data base. The Report (in
the section on Observations/Recommendations) reads: “The collection of
biometric information and its linkage with personal information
without amendment to the Citizenship Act 1955 as well as the
Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity
Cards) Rules 2003, appears to be beyond the scope of subordinate
legislation, which needs to be examined in detail by Parliament.”
I submit that the complicity of the senior office bearers of both the
Houses of the Parliament indicates that the office bearers are
apparently complicit in illegitimate and censured acts of the
executive. It is quite bizarre that they undertook this despite
knowing the fate of The National Identification Authority of India
Bill in both its 2010 and 2013 incarnations. It demonstrates quite an
alarming silence of all the legislators in general but especially of
those who were members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Finance that trashed the aadhaar Bill and the project drawing on
global experience from UK, Australia, China, France, USA, Philippines
and others.
In the current context, Section 57 of the rejected aadhaar Bill merits
attention because it reveals executive’s intent to take legislative
consent for biometric aadhaar and related initiatives for granted.
Anything done under the Planning Commission’s notification dated
January 28, 2009 that set up the UIDAI “shall be deemed to have been
done or taken under the corresponding provision of this Act”. This
created a logical compulsion for the legislature to rigorously examine
the various activities undertaken by the UIDAI as it is likely to have
serious consequences in connection with identification of persons, who
the information is handed over to, with whom contracts have been
entered, the non-existence of a data protection law, privacy law and
its inherent possible structural link with the proposed Human DNA
Profiling Identity Bill. This is significant because the aadhaar Bill
did not define biometric data and DNA and voice samples are part of
biometric data besides finger prints and iris scan.
It is quite apparent that after central government employees including
defence employees, the MPs, it will be the turn of the MLAs, MLCs and
other elected representatives of the Panchayati Raj institutions and
municipalities to be targeted on priority basis for biometric aadhaar
entrapment.
I submit that now it has been reported by the Economic Times that
Unitus Seed Fund (USF) will invest Rs 5 crore in startups that are
building products and services based on aadhaar number to be issued to
Indian residents. Based in Bangalore and Seattle, Washington, USF is
an investment fund that provides seed funding to social enterprise. It
plans to launch and support aadhaar based business initiatives. USF is
part of Unitus Labs, a micro-credit non-profit organization which is a
successor of Unitus Inc. company involved with SKS Microcredit. This
initiative of USF is reportedly supported by Khosla Labs which was
setup by Vinod Khosla, a Venture Capitalist and Nadhamuni in 2012.
Currently, Nadhamuni is the CEO of Khosla Labs. It was not clear as to
why Nadhamuni who considers “Aadhaar as important infrastructure as
say roads, airports and ports” left UIDAI midway. Perhaps, it is
becoming clearer now.
I submit that meanwhile, the 6th Federal Council meeting of the
National Federation of Civil Accounts Associations held on 18th and
19th September 2014 in Cochin passed a resolution urging the
Government of India to delink the aadhar from the process of
implementation of Biometric attendance system and before implementing
the new scheme of biometric attendance system in the Central
Government Offices.
During a recent visit to Geneva to attend the 3rd UN Forum on Business
and Human Rights, I was informed by a German public policy researcher
that the real scandal in Germany was not about the phone tapping of
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s by USA’s National Security Agency
(NSA, an entity declared unconstitutional by a US District Court).
She underlined that the real scam was that the biometric profile was
all the German government and intelligence officials are available
with the NSA.
I submit that the 1500 page manifesto titled “2083: A European
Declaration of Independence” brought out by Norwegian gunman and
neo-Crusader, Anders Behring Breivik who carried out the heinous
attacks on 22 July 2011 by bombing government buildings in Oslo
killing his fellow citizens merits study. This manifesto refers to the
word “identity” over 100 times, “unique” over 40 times and
“identification” over 10 times. There is reference to “state-issued
identity cards”, “converts’ identity cards”, “identification card”,
“fingerprints”, “DNA” etc. The words in this manifesto give a sense of
deja vu.
I wonder what if an exercise similar to the one recommended in the
infamous manifesto has an official sanction in the form of biometric
aadhaar. In such a situation, is it inappropriate to wonder that most
legislators of all shades are willing to pay any price, mortgage
country’s sovereignty and stoop to any level for a photo opportunity
with the President of USA because of ignorance.
This is also to draw your attention towards the attached order of the
Hon’ble Supreme Court dated March 24, 2014 and the report of the
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on biometric aadhaar
amidst the demand of 17 eminent citizens led by late Justice V R
Krishna Iyer demanding stoppage of the biometric Unique Identification
(UID)/aadhaar number and related projects. It demonstrates that all
the circulars and orders of Government of India and State Governments
are illegal and illegitimate.
I submit that UID/aadhaar violates human rights, right to privacy as
well as other Constitutional rights, the application of UID was
admittedly restricted to ‘civilian application’ and but now it has
been extended to defence application. The entire information of the
citizens and residents is going to be admittedly stored online and on
cloud under the Digital India Initiative which will be available to
everybody inside and outside the country. The foreign companies like
M/s L1 Solutions, a subsidiary of French Conglomerate Safran and
Accenture, a US company who are de-duplicating the enrolment at the
rate of Rs 2.75 per de-duplication are admittedly storing the
biometric and demographic data for 7 years in violation of Hon’ble
Court’s order passed on 24.3.2014. In electronic age storage of data
even for one minutes by any entity means storage for eternity. This
storage of the biometric data of Indians is not for free. Indian
residents and citizens are paying for it at rate of Rs 2.75 paisa per
biometric de-duplication and will do so for umpteenth time!
I submit that the democratic mandate of the last parliamentary
elections was against biometric aadhaar. In the absence of robust
application of legal mind in the State, the Unique Identification
Authority of India (UIDAI) has generated over 70 crore biometric
aadhaar numbers of Indian residents although the project does not have
the required legal mandate after the proposed National Identification
Authority of India Bill, 2010 was trashed by the Parliamentary
Committee in its report to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Unmindful of this Central Government's promptness to promote and
support aadhaar is coincidentally supported by Shri Mukesh Ambani of
Reliance Industries who has expressed his support for biometric
identification saying, “Aadhaar, an initiative of Unique
Identification Authority of India, will soon support the world’s
largest online platform to deliver government welfare services
directly to the poor.” He has written this in a chapter titled ‘Making
the next leap’ endorsing biometric profiling based identification in
the book ‘Reimagining India’ edited by McKinsey & Company published by
Simon & Schuster in November 2013. This appears to be an explicit
signal to the political parties and media houses who receive direct
and indirect corporate donations from companies as their clients in
myriad disguises.
I submit that before their death 17 eminent citizens including Justice
Iyer, Shri K G Kannabiran, noted human rights lawyer and Shri S R
Sankaran, noted people’s IAS Officer issued a Statement of Concern
against the biometric UID/aadhaar number. The other signatories
included Prof Romila Thapar, historian, Justice A.P.Shah, Retired
Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi, Prof. Upendra Baxi, noted jurist
and ex-Vice Chancellor of Universities of Surat and Delhi, Trilochan
Sastry, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Association for
Democratic Reforms (ADR), Bezwada Wilson, leader of Safai Karamchari
Andolan and Prof. Jagdish Chhokar, ex- IIM, Ahmedabad, and ADR.
I submit that Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, a people’s judge of the
Supreme Court who passed away on December 4, 2014 in Kochi was opposed
to biometric aadhaar and Planning Commission’s UIDAI. Although his
views have been endorsed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Finance, Supreme Court, Punjab and Haryana High Court and National
Human Rights Commission besides European Court of Human Rights,
governments of UK, France, Australia, China and Supreme Court of
Philippines, the present Bhartiya Janta Party led Government like the
previous Congress Party led Government is bulldozing the biometric
data based 12 digit UID number branded as aadhaar.
The Statement of Concern reads: “The project that proposes to give
every resident a `unique identity number’ is a matter of great concern
for those working on issues of food security, NREGA, migration,
technology, decentralisation, constitutionalism, civil liberties and
human rights. The process of setting up the Authority has resulted in
very little, if any, discussion about this project and its effects and
fallout. The documents on the UIDAI website, and a recent draft law
(the National Identification Authority Bill) do not provide answers to
the many questions that are being raised in the public domain. This
project is intended to collect demographic data about all residents in
the country. It is said that it will impact on the PDS and NREGA
programmes, and plug leakages and save the government large sums of
MONEY. It would, however, seem that even basic procedures have not
been followed before launching on such a massive project.
Before it goes any further, we consider it imperative that the
following be done:
• Do a feasibility study: There are claims made in relation
to the project, about what it can do for PDS and NREGA, for instance,
which does not reflect any understanding of the situation of the
situation on the ground. The project documents do not say what other
effects the project may have, including its potential to be intrusive
and violative of privacy, who may handle the data (there will be
multiple persons involved in entering, maintaining and using the
data), who may be able to have access to the data and similar other
questions.
• Do a cost:benefit analysis: It is reported that the UIDAI
estimates the project will costs Rs 45,000 crores to the exchequer in
the next 4 years. This does not seem to include the costs that will be
incurred by Registrars, Enrollers, internal systems costs that the PDs
system will have to budget if it is to be able to use the UID, the
estimated cost to the end user and to the number holder.
• In a system such as this, a mere statement that the UIDAI
will deal with the security of the data is obviously insufficient. How
does the UIDAI propose to deal with data theft? If this security
cannot be reasonably guaranteed, the wisdom of holding such data in a
central registry may need to be reviewed.
• The involvement of firms such as Ernst & Young and
Accenture raise further questions about who will have access to the
data, and what that means to the people of India.
• Constitutionality of this project, including in the matter
of privacy, the relationship between the state and the people,
security and other fundamental rights.
Questions have been raised which have not been addressed so far,
including those about
• Undemocratic process: UIDAI was set-up via a GoI
notification as an attached office of the Planning Commission without
any discussion or debate in the Parliament or civil society. In the
year and a half of its inception, the Authority has signed MoUs with
virtually all states and UTs, LIC, Petroleum Ministry and many banks.
In July, the Authority circulated the draft NIA Bill (to achieve
statutory status); the window for public feedback was two weeks.
Despite widespread feedback and calls for making all feedback public,
the Authority has not made feedback available. Further in direct
contravention to the process of public feedback, the NIA Bill was
listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha 2010 monsoon session
• Privacy (It is only now that the DoPT is said to be
working on a draft of a privacy law, but nothing is out for discussion
even yet)
• Surveillance: where this technology, and the existence of
the UID number, and its working, could result in increasing the
potential for surveillance
• Profiling Tracking
• Convergence, by which those with access to state power, as
well as companies, could collate information about each individual
with the help of the UID number.”
It further stated, “National IDs have been abandoned in the US,
Australia and the newly-elected British government. The reasons have
predominantly been: costs and privacy. If it is too expensive for the
US with a population of 308 million, and the UK with 61 million
people, and Australia with 21 million people, it is being asked why
India thinks it can prioritise its spending in this direction. In the
UK, the Home Secretary explained that they were abandoning the project
because it would otherwise be `intrusive bullying’ by the state, and
that the government intended to be the `servant’ of the people, and
not their `master’. Is there a lesson in it for us? In the late
nineties, the Supreme Court of Philippines struck down the President’s
Executive Order A.O 308 which instituted a biometric based national ID
system calling it unconstitutional on two grounds – the overreach of
the executive over the legislative powers of the congress and invasion
of privacy. The same is applicable in India – UIDAI has been
constituted on the basis of a GoI notification and there is a
fundamental risk to civil liberties with the convergence of UID…etc.”
The Statement of Concern reads: “The UIDAI is still at the stage of
conducting pilot studies. The biometric pilot study has reportedly
already thrown up problems especially among the poor whose
fingerprints are not stable, and whose iris scans suffer from
malnourishment related cataract and among whom the incidence of
corneal scars is often found. The project is clearly still in its
inception. The project should be halted before it goes any further and
the prelude to the project be attended to, the public informed and
consulted, and the wisdom of the project determined. The Draft Bill
too needs to be publicly debated. This is a project that could change
the status of the people in this country, with effects on our security
and constitutional rights, and a consideration of all aspects of the
project should be undertaken with this in mind.”
It concluded, “We, therefore, ask that the project be halted, A
feasibility study be done covering all aspects of this issue, experts
be tasked with studying its constitutionality, the law on privacy be
urgently worked on (this will affect matters way beyond the UID
project), a cost : benefit analysis be done and a public, informed
debate be conducted before any such major change be brought in.”
This is the statement of the same Justice Iyer on whose passing away
President Shri Pranab Mukherjee said, “As an eminent jurist, he used
law as an instrument of social engineering and social change making
justice accessible to all, including the marginalized and the
vulnerable. As a judge of the Supreme Court of India, he made immense
contribution to the development of human rights jurisprudence. His sad
demise leaves a void which is difficult to fill.”
Greeting Justice Iyer on his 100th birthday, Prime Minister, Shri
Narendra Modi said, “Legal luminary, philosopher and intellectual,
Justice Krishna Iyer is an Institution in himself, who dedicated his
life to the Nation. Justice Iyer’s life and works are an inspiration
to all of us. My interactions with him have been very enriching. I
learnt a lot from him,” But when it comes to following Justice Iyer’s
recommendations on biometric aadhaar, the government seems to ignore
it and follow the advice of India’s richest man.
CFCL is involved in the research and advocacy against surveillance
technologies since 2010. It has appeared before the relevant
Parliamentary Committee that questioned the biometric identification
of Indians without any legal mandate. In the face of such assault on
citizens’ rights and the emergence of a regime that is making
legislatures subservient to database and data mining companies, the
urgent intervention of the progressive political parties, legislators
and informed citizens must not be postponed anymore.
In view of the above, CFCL demands that even at this late stage
aadhaar and related schemes be halted and await Hon’ble Supreme
Court’s final verdict in this regard. Rajya Sabha should seek a white
paper on the legality of biometric data collection and work undertaken
under the project.
Being a columnist with MoneyLife (www.moneylife.in), a Mumbai based
financial magazine and having authored more than 40 articles on the
biometric surveillance and identification technologies and having
given testimony to Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance and to
the Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Subordinate
Legislation, I will be happy to share more details and documents in
this regard.
In view of the above, I seek your urgent intervention even as the
biometric profile of every current and future Indian political leader
and official is being stored by foreign governments and companies, yet
another act of belittling parliament has been performed with impunity.
Yours faithfully
Gopal Krishna
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL)
E-mail:[email protected]
Web: www.toxicswatch.org
Cc
Hon'ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, Parliament of India
Hon'ble Members of Parliament
.
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