SC pulls up banks, telecom companies for creating panic on Aadhaar linking

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court directed banks and telecom service providers to alert subscribers about the last date to link their accounts and mobile phones with Aadhaar to prevent panic among users about accounts being frozen and phones being disconnected. The deadline for bank accounts may be extended to March 31 from the end of the year if the hearing of a constitution bench case on Aadhaar and privacy doesn t end by then. The deadline for phones is February 6 the government said. Under the government s new money laundering rules Aadhaar is required for opening bank accounts. All existing accounts were to have been verified by December 31 failing which they will cease to be operational. However this date may be extended up to March 31 2018. Therefore until March 31 2018 existing bank accounts will not be made non-operational for not linking with Aadhaar the government said in a counter-affidavit running into 1 163 pages. No coercive action will be taken qua their bank accounts till March 31 2018 But as far as opening of new accounts are concerned Aadhaar or enrolment ID must be given as proof of identity. Banks and telecom companies have been sending repeated reminders to people the top court was told prompting the bench to ask them to state the last date in their alerts to consumers. Senior advocates Shyam Divan KV Vishwanath and Arvind P Datar said that the messages gave the impression that accounts and mobile connections would be immediately frozen. If the SMS alerts contained the deadline people wouldn t panic the lawyers opposing Aadhaar argued. The top court however refused any other relief on the ground that it would be addressed by the constitution bench which will examine whether Aadhaar impinges on the fundamental right to privacy of citizens because of what is said to be its mandatory and intrusive nature by opponents. The hearing had been deferred till a ruling on the right to privacy. With the top court having ruled that citizens have a fundamental right to privacy a five-judge bench will commence hearing petitions challenging Aadhaar s mandatory nature. The government also said that Aadhaar would have to be provided to the prescribed authority for linking with permanent account numbers (PANs). It is a requirement for filing income tax returns as per a circular. Udayaditya Banerjee lawyer for SG Vombatkere who has opposed the PAN-Aadhaar link said that though the court had in the Binoy Viswam judgement said that those who do not have it were not required to link it to PAN pending outcome of the challenge to Aadhaar the government had made it mandatory for filing of IT returns. Datar appearing for former IAS officer MG Devasahayam wondered how the government could bring in such changes through the prevention of money laundering rules. He also argued that there was no need to link bank accounts with Aadhaar as banks had their own KYC (know your customer) norms. Under Rule 2(b) of the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules 2017 Aadhaarhas been made mandatory for individual clients companies partnership firms and trusts for opening of bank accounts maintaining existing accounts making any financial transactions of and above Rs 50 000 and crediting foreign remittance into small accounts. At the outset the attorney general said that the Aadhaar Act would be changed to reflect concerns about data protection once an expert committee came up with recommendations by March 31 2018. He said that the government was willing to extend the deadline from December 31to March 31 2018 should the final hearing not conclude by that date. As of now the deadline isDecember 31 for getting Aadhaar and linking it with bank accounts he said. NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court eased on Friday the pressure mounted by banks and telecom companies on customers through frequent messages to link Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phone numbers and ordered that they intimate people about the deadline for doing so. A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said even judges are not spared from such messages which the petitioners termed as part of coercion to link Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones. The bench ordered telcos and banks not to create panic among people and asked them to specify in the messages that the deadline for Aadhaar-bank account linkage is December 31 and February 6 for mobile phones. Petitioners challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar have alleged that customers were being bombarded with messages threatening deactivation of bank accounts and mobile phone connections if they failed to link them with their UIDAI numbers. Senior advocate Shyam Divan and Arvind Datar appearing for the petitioners sought an interim stay on such mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones through pressure tactics. When attorney general K K Venugopal opposed these arguments terming them as oral and off-the-cuff allegations Justice Sikri said such messages should not be sent without mentioning the deadline. I do not want to say in the presence of media but I am also receiving such messages he said in a lighter vein. We make it clear that in the messages sent by banks and telecom service providers the date of December 31 2017 and February 6 2018 shall also be indicated as the last date of linking Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile numbers respectively the bench ordered while refusing to stay the rules under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act mandating Aadhaar-bank account linkage and a telecom department circular making Aadhaar the new e-KYC for mobile phones. The petitioners insisted that Centre s decision to frame rules to prosecute people for not linking their account number with Aadhaar was illegal and requested the court to stay the government s notification. The bench however said Since the final hearing would start in November-end and the time for linking Aadhaar has already been extended there is no need to pass an interim order. Have you misplaced your Aadhaar card or lost the 12-digit UID or Unique Identity Number? The UIDAI or Unique Identification Authority of India has provided a tool on its portal - uidai.gov.in - which enables Aadhaar holders or Aadhaar applicants to retrieve their UID or EID (enrolment ID) on their registered mobile number. This was said by the UIDAI on microbloggins site Twitter. If you have misplaced your Aadhaar card or need the Aadhaar number or Unique Identification Number (UID) or can t locate the Aadhaar enrolment ID (EID) you can actually request the UIDAI to send the information on your registered mobile number - the phone number fed into the UIDAI database while applying for Aadhaar or updated through the UIDAI portal after issuance of Aadhaar.How to receive Aadhaar card number (UID) on your mobileThis Retrieve Lost UID/EID tool can be used to retrieve your Aadhaar number (UID) as well as Aadhaar enrolment ID (EID). (Click on the Retrieve Lost UID/EID link on the UIDAI website - uidai.gov.in)You can also access the Retrieve Lost UID/EID tool by clicking here.On the next page make sure Aadhaar Number is selected on the left side of the page for receiving your Aadhaar number on mobile.Fill in the personal details as specified against the required fields. You need to give your name the mobile number or email address registered with Aadhaar and the security code as displayed on the form. Your registered Mobile Number / Email which you had provided at the time of enrolment is mandatory to retrieve your lost UID / EID according to the UIDAI website.(The user is required to fill in the required details and click on Send One Time Password )After entering these details click on Send One Time Password at the bottom of the form to proceed.Upon a successful entry the UIDAI facility sends an OTP or one-time password to the registered mobile number or email address.(The user is required to enter the OTP or one-time password received on his or her registered mobile number and click on Verify OTP to proceed)Enter this OTP in the given field on the right hand side of the form and click on Verify OTP .(The UIDAI portal displays this page after completion of Retrieve EID/UID process)At the end of a successful entry the UIDAI tool displays the message: Congratulation! Your Aadhaar Number (UID) is sent to your Mobile. Check your mobile number for accessing your Aadhaar number.Users also get an option of downloading the Aadhaar card in the digital form.How to get Aadhaar enrolment ID (EID) on registered mobile numberThe Receive Your Lost UID/EID tool also enables users to retrieve their Aadhaar enrolment number also known as EID or enrolment ID. This facility is for Aadhaar applicants who are still awaiting their Aadhaar card. (The UIDAI s Retrieve Your Lost UID/EID tool enables a user to retrieve his/her Aadhaar number - for users who have already been issued a UID - or Aadhaar enrolment number - for those who have applied for Aadhaar card/number but not yet received their UID)Select Enrolment Number (EID) option on the left side of the tool fill in the required details such as name phone number/email and the OTP. At the end of a successful submission the UIDAI tool sends the enrolment ID to the user. NEW DELHI: The Maharashtra government with the help of Aadhaar averted a major financial bungle in its farm loan waiver scheme by detecting in time that data provided by banks on distressed farmers seeking waiver had wrong or inconsistent Aadhaar numbers. Banks in the state had fed wrong Aadhaar numbers of nearly 20 lakh farmers of a total of 25.57 lakh applicants in their records. The consequence is that the state s farm loan waiver rollout may now be delayed. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis pulled up the state level-bankers committee on the matter on October 25 the state government informed the Centre. Out of records of 25.57 lakh farmers submitted by the banks along with their Aadhaar numbers 19.85 lakh records were found with either invalid or junk Aadhaar numbers after upon cross-checking with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) a senior government official told ET speaking on condition of anonymity. Due to incorrect Aadhaar numbers provided by banks the process of matching the farmer data with bank data has become cumbersome and error prone leading to delays in finalising the list of beneficiaries and the computation of benefit amount that will flow to each applicant. The state government said these errors could lead to excess or short payment the official said. Officials in the Centre commended the Maharashtra government for making Aadhaar mandatory for the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana (CSMSSY) for farm loan waiver which proved instrumental in preventing the massive misallotment. Farmers in the state have been protesting for loan waiver amidst a spate of farmer suicides. The state government had asked farmers in July to register on the CSMSSY portal using Aadhaar e-KYC authentication nearly 1.05 crore people did so. Banks were asked separately to provide information regarding pending farm loans in a 66-column template. Banks have so far provided 30 lakh records to the state government and provided Aadhaar number of the loan account holder in 25.57 lakh records. But the state government found that the data provided by the banks in 80% of these records having serious errors and inconsistencies the official quoted earlier said. Errors were found mainly of three kinds after the bank data was validated by matching it with the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) of UIDAI. One simply the incorrect Aadhaar number was provided by the bank. Two the same valid Aadhaar number was provided for multiple individuals. Third the same invalid Aadhaar number was provided for multiple individuals. There are cases of a random 12-digit Aadhaar number like 100000000000 or 111111111111 or 123123123123 provided for multiple individuals. Banks did not realise that UIDAI does not allot Aadhaar numbers starting with 0 or 1. It seems wilful forgery by banks. If the data was not cross-checked with UIDAI the state government may have credited the loan waiver amount to banks while actual beneficiary farmers would have struggled to get the benefit an official said. The state s chief minister told the state level bankers committee on October 25 to ensure that all subsequent data provided by them is free of such errors and inconsistencies. This may lead to further delay in the loan waiver roll-out in Maharashtra. A state official explained that the software application of CSMSSY uses Aadhaar number as a primary key for matching data provided by applicants and the information provided by banks regarding loans. The Maharashtra government also found other errors in the data provided by banks like incorrect savings and loan account numbers a mismatch in principal amount and interest amount that did not match the total amount provided by banks and same account number being classified in overdue category and fully paid category. Grave irregularities have earlier been detected on part of the banks both government-run and private during the demonetisation exercise like allowing huge deposits and withdrawals by lakhs of suspect companies. Written by Subhashis Banerjee | Published:November 4 2017 12:06 am Aadhaar undeniably has potential and can perhaps even be a game changer . (Representational photo) Related News SC tells banks telcos: Message to customers must specify deadline for linking AadhaarSupreme Court directs mobile service providers banks to include last date for Aadhaar enrolment in alert messages200 people in Meghalaya seek to opt out of AadhaarThe news last month of the starvation death of an 11-year-old girl in the Simdega district in Jharkhand allegedly because of denial of PDS ration due to Aadhaar linking problems is appalling. The Aadhaar ecosystem definitely needs to pass a stringent welfare test much more crucially than the privacy test. Aadhaar undeniably has potential and can perhaps even be a game changer . But the way it has been used to design public policies especially in welfare seems to have caused havoc. The relentless push of Aadhaar without adequate justification or calibration with complete disregard of the distress it may be causing to the poor and the under-privileged is symptomatic of high-handed decision-making and technological muscle-flexing. It is rapidly setting an example of how not to do public policy interventions. Both the last UPA and the current NDA governments must share the blame for these faults of Aadhaar UPA for its careless introduction and NDA for pushing it so thoughtlessly. Independent researchers and civil society activists have long been alerting us to the possibilities of such tragedies. There have been reports of widespread exclusion and disruption that Aadhaar may be causing in welfare schemes. While it is true these are based on anecdotal evidence they do point to crucial problems with the Aadhaar deployment. Irrespective of what may have been happening before Aadhaar was introduced it is imperative to ensure that nobody who needs welfare is ever denied. After all the rights derived from the NFSA and MGNREGA are unconditional. The narrative from the government and the UIDAI in response to the reports of exclusion and disruption has often been callous. It has primarily been based on denial on dubious savings claims and on the lame quoting of the Aadhaar Act to say that nobody should be denied their entitlements because of Aadhaar. It is the UIDAI which has been at the receiving end of much of the public flak but whose responsibility is it to ensure that no deserving person is denied their due benefit? Shouldn t the Central and the state government functionaries be at the forefront to ensure fair and efficient disbursement of PDS ration? Where are the ground reports from the district administrations about the PDS denials because of Aadhaar? Who has designed and deployed the Aadhaar-based PDS? Is there any standardisation across the country and are the designs available for public scrutiny? There may indeed be leakages in PDS but where is the policy analysis that biometric-based identity verification is necessary for every transaction and that a periodic KYC as is common with more privileged citizens will not suffice? And does the UIDAI have no responsibility towards standardisation and audit? What is immediately required is a thorough analysis of the denials in PDS. What is the exclusion rate due to targeting errors independent of Aadhaar and how many are excluded only due to Aadhaar? What is the biometric failure rate across the population sorted according to age gender occupation and region? Are the failures inherent to the technology or are they avoidable process errors? What exactly are the problems with the Aadhaar linking processes and can they be rectified? To what extent is the problem due to connectivity failures? Despite the fact that some of the state governments like Andhra Pradesh and Delhi do make the data publicly available on their websites the presentation is not comprehensive enough to enable an exact determination of the above. It is incredible that there appears to be no publicly available peer-reviewed report that provides a rigorous and comprehensive analysis of the above issues. Mandating a biometric-based digital identity for PDS for a population that may lack the cultural capital required for a smooth adoption was bound to be challenging and the designers needed to be much more thoughtful. Rather than the rhetoric on whether Aadhaar empowers the citizen or the state what is urgently required is a precise statement on how exactly Aadhaar may help targeting by reducing both false negatives and false positives. It is also necessary to precisely spell out how exactly and to what extent Aadhaar and the associated digitisation may help to prevent leakages by curbing corruption. An effective design of using digital identity in PDS is not possible without a thorough understanding of the ground realities. However it does appear from reading of public accounts that the elements of such a design must be based on an offline identity verification system with opportunistic uploading of cached records; on an error-free linking process; on deployment of tamper-proof digital weighing machines and end-to-end recording at the supply chain and at the ration shops; on effective online receipt systems and online audits; and most importantly on user education and a quick and effective grievance redress system. The offline identity verification may simply be based on digital reading of an encrypted and digitally signed photograph of the beneficiary encoded on the ration card followed by physical comparison and storing for records along with a time-stamped photograph acquired on the spot with a tamper-proof device. And it will be crucial to discuss and debate any such design with all stakeholders and not push anything down from the top. We have to ensure with or without Aadhaar that people do not go hungry in this country. Otherwise all claims to development are bound to sound hollow. The writer is professor department of computer science and engineering IIT Delhi For all the latest Opinion News download Indian Express App More Related News Take it slow Aadhaar a threat to national security sure SC will strike it down: BJP s Subramanian Swamy Tags: Aadhaar Indian Railways has increased the monthly cap on tickets booked on the ICRTC portal from six to 12 for Aadhaar-verified passengers officials said. The move which came into effect on October 26 is believed to be an innovative way for the railways to encourage passengers to link their Aadhaar numbers to their online booking accounts on IRCTC. IRCTC officials said passengers can continue to book up to six tickets a month without validating their Aadhaar cards. If the number goes beyond six the Aadhaar number of the user and one of the passengers should be updated in the IRCTC portal an official explained. Users on the IRCTC portal have to click on Aadhaar KYC under the my profile category and update their Aadhaar number. A one-time password (OTP) will be sent to the mobile number linked to Aadhaar and should be entered for verification. In addition the Aadhaar number of any one of the accompanying passengers should also be updated under the master list . This will be validated through an OTP. Users can store the names of verified passengers accompanying them on the master list . This should be done before starting the process for booking more than six tickets a month officials said. The move is expected to eliminate malpractices in ticket bookings as touts and travel agents cannot create fake user IDs anymore. In the IRCTC portal six passengers can be reserved on a single ticket under general quota while Tatkal bookings allow four passengers per ticket. The railways had announced in December last year that registration of Aadhaar with IRCTC was mandatory to avail concessions from April 1 2017 but dropped the idea after opposition from various forums. Don t have time to link your mobile number with Aadhaar? Soon you may not need to visit the telecom service provider s store with your Aadhaar. The Department of Telecom and telecom service providers are working on a process of SMS/IVRS and app-based verification. The process will link your Aadhaar and mobile number using one-time password or IVRS call. Here s how it will work As per a DoT order service providers will enable a scheme to use OTP-based verification for mobile users through SMS or voiced-based IVRS call or via mobile app. The users will have to message their Aadhaar number from their mobile phone at a designated number provided by service providers. The service providers will then do a demographic verification of the number. Then the service provider will send OTP request to UIDAI. UIDAI will then send the OTP on the mobile number. The user will send this OTP to the designated mobile number and e-KYC will be verified. Some mobile subscribers are unable to visit stores of service providers due to factors such as lack of time old age chronic illness or disability etc. DoT has directed the service providers to facilitate doorstep verification for such consumers. With these steps the government intends to address the concerns of subscribers taking into account their convenience and privacy. The government has now made it easier for mobile phone customers to link their phone number (SIM) with their Aadhaar card number. Aadhaar - the 12 digit biometric number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India - is required to be linked with multiple essential facilities like with the phone number bank accounts social welfare schemes etc the government said. The last date for Aadhaar-SIM linking is February 6 2018. As of now people who link their Aadhaar card with phone number have to visit a retailer and provide their biometrics again.This will change with effect from December 1 2017. Aadhaar-SIM linking: How to link Aadhaar with mobile phone number via OTP By 1 Dec 2017 you can also choose to verify your mobile SIM with Aadhaar without giving your biometrics to Telecom Service Providers stated the official Twitter handle of the Unique Identification @UIDAI. People will be able to do it with the help of a one-time password (OTP) received on their mobile number registered with their Aadhaar card from the comfort of their home. By 1 Dec 2017 you can also choose to verify your mobile SIM with Aadhaar without giving your biometrics to Telecom Service Providers. pic.twitter.com/zcCKYbYgwP Aadhaar (@UIDAI) November 2 2017Besides the OTP-based option mobile users can link their Aadhaar card number with their phone through two more options: via app and the Interactive voice response (IVRS) facility. These new methods will help subscribers to get their mobile number linked to Aadhaar without visiting the stores of the telcos (telecom companies) the Department of Telecom said in a press release dated October 25. For the ease of senior citizens and the people with disability and chronic illness DoT has also recommended for the re-verification at subscribers doorstep it noted.The DoT has mandated that telecom service providers agent should not have access to the subscribers e-KYC data.Only the name and address of the subscribers should be visible the telecom department added.Subscribers can verify or re-verify their mobile numbers from anywhere in the country irrespective of which service area their mobile connection belongs to it further said.The telecom operators have welcomed the latest clarifications by the DoT on Aadhaar card linking. ...We are implementing all the necessary processes so as to be able to use the additional methods prescribed including OTP App based and the IVRS facility. We expect it to get much faster and easier for individual mobile subscribers to comply with the e-KYC (Know Your Customer) norms using their Aadhaar Registered Mobile Number (ARMN) industry body Cellular Operators Association of India representative said.