‘Vote Buying’ behind launch of 21st crore UID-Aadhaar number Enabled Service Delivery (AESD) for 2014 elections
Citizens Forum
for Civil Liberties (CFCL)
To
Shri
V.S. Sampath
Chief Election Commissioner
Election Commission of India
New Delhi
Subject- ‘Vote Buying’ behind launch of 21st crore
UID-Aadhaar number Enabled Service Delivery (AESD) for 2014
elections- reveals World Bank paper
Sir,
This is to draw your attention towards the deceptive ‘voluntariness’ of UID-Aadhaar
taking citizens, States & parties for a ride by ‘vote buying’ through
conditional e-payments. A recent paper of the World Bank reveals the ulterior
motive behind UID related schemes. The Policy Research Working
Paper titled ‘Conditional Cash Transfers, Political Participation, and
Voting Behavior’ brought out by World Bank in October 2012 “provides
empirical evidence to support the notion that political participation and
political views are responsive to targeted transfers.” It notes that in
Colombia, “During the 2010 presidential
election voters covered by FA (large scale conditional cash transfer) not only
voted more often, but also expressed a stronger preference (around 2 percentage
points) for the official party that implemented and expanded the program…
Another possible explanation is that FA (large scale conditional ash transfer)
was strategically targeted and motivated by clientelism and vote buying.” The paper is attached.
I submit that the launch of biometric data based 12 digit
Unique Identification (UID)-Aadhaar Number linked welfare schemes is being
bulldozed with 2014 elections in mind with the ulterior motive of altering
voting behavior of the citizens by creating a ‘universal identity
infrastructure’ linked to ‘unified payment infrastructure’.
I submit that the launch exercise of October 20, 2012 stands
exposed because it is officially admitting that UID-Aadhaar is mandatory
contrary to what was claimed at its launch in Maharashtra on September 29,
2010. The creeping of voluntariness into compulsion through threat of
discontinuance of services has been roundly castigated by Bhartiya Janata Party
(BJP) leader Shri Yashwant Sinha headed Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Finance.
I submit that on its website Unique Identification Authority of India
(UIDAI) continues to claim that UID-Aadhhar is ‘voluntary’ and not ‘mandatory’.
The million dollar question which Smt. Sonia Gandhi, Dr Manmohan Singh, Shri P
Chidambaram, Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Shri Nandan Monohar Nilekani need
to answer is: how can Aadhaar be deemed ‘voluntary’ if service delivery is
being made dependent on it. This is a grave breach of public trust. This is a
deliberate exercise in deception. The proposed ‘electronic transfers of
benefits and entitlements’ through ‘Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of the
beneficiaries’ is crafted to make it mandatory.
The claim “Each Aadhaar number
will be unique to an individual and will remain valid for life. Aadhaar number
will help you provide access to services like banking, mobile phone connections
and other Govt and Non-Govt services in due course” is fraught with creating a
platform for convergence of government and corporate sector as is aimed by the
‘Transformational Government’ project of World Bank’s eTransform Initiative
launched in partnership with Governments of South Korea and France and six
transnational corporations like Gemalto, IBM, Intel, L-1 Identity Solutions
(now part of Safran Group), Microsoft and Pfizer.
I submit that the UID-Aadhaar related schemes is unfolding
despite the fact that Parliament has not passed the National Identification
Authority of India Bill (NIAI), 2010 proposed by the Indian National Congress
led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. It is noteworthy that Sinha
headed Parliamentary Committee in its report to the Parliament has rejected UID
and biometric data collection terming it as an illegal and an unethical
project.
It may be recalled that Shri S.Y. Quraishi, the previous
Chief Election Commissioner had sent a dangerous proposal to Union Ministry of
Home Affairs asking it “to merge the Election ID cards with UID”. Such an
exercise would mean rewriting and engineering the electoral ecosystem with the
unconstitutional and illegal use of biometric technology in a context where
electoral finance has become source of corruption and black money in the
country. This would lead to linking of UID, Election ID and Electronic Voting
Machines (EVMs) which is not as innocent and as politically neutral as it has
been made out to be. It is noteworthy that all EVMs have a UID as well. In the
meanwhile, it is reliably learnt that voter registration in Manipur is
happening using biometric data. This makes a mockery of the recommendations of
the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance in its report to the Parliament
notes that “The collection of biometric information and its linkage with
personal information of individuals 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 ahead of next parliamentary elections, with
the launch of 21st crore UID-Aadhaar Number and Aadhaar Enabled Service
Delivery (AESD) on October 20, 2012 contemptuously ignores Parliament,
Parliamentary Committee, National Advisory Council and eminent citizens and the
lessons from the belated report from Planning Commission’s Group of Experts on
Privacy dated October 16, 2012. What is evident is that there is an open war
declared on sensitive personal information like biometric data which includes
finger prints, iris scans, voice prints, DNA samples etc. The fact is a
centralized electronic database of citizens and privacy, both are conceptually
contradictory.
I submit that besides influencing the voter preference, once
the Planning Commission’s Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) of 60 crore
citizens is ready by 2014 and the related National Population Register (NPR) of
the remaining 61 crore citizens is ready, it will emerge as a potential threat
to minority communities of all sorts by some regime which finds them unsuitable
for their political projects.
I submit that so far the entire political class has remained
insensitive to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights about
violation of the right to privacy and citizens’ rights. The case was heard
publicly on February 27, 2008, and the unanimous decision of 17 judges was
delivered on December 4, 2008. The court found that the “blanket and
indiscriminate nature” of the power of retention of the fingerprints, cellular
samples, and DNA profiles of persons suspected but not convicted of offenses,
failed to strike a fair balance between competing public and private interests
and ruled that the United Kingdom had “overstepped any acceptable margin of
appreciation” in this regard. The decision is nonappealable.
I submit that unmindful of this, in India, National databank
of biometric data is unfolding which is proposed to be linked to electoral
database amidst the political myopia of political parties in the face of the
onslaught of the foreign biometric and surveillance technology companies. The
only saving grace has been Parliamentary Standing Committee that has taken on
board studies done in the UK on the identity scheme that was begun and later
withdrawn in May 2010, where the problems were identified to include "(a)
huge cost involved and possible cost overruns; (b) too complex;(c) untested,
unreliable and unsafe technology; (d) possibility of risk to the safety
and security of citizens; and (e) requirement of high standard security
measures, which would result in escalating the estimated operational costs."
I submit that opposition parties at
the centre and in the States appear to be in the dark about these attempts at
re-plumbing the electoral ecosystem and a complicit section of civil society
seems guilty of practicing ‘the economics of innocent fraud’.
I submit that the results of the
October 2012 World Bank paper find that “voters respond to targeted transfers
and that these transfers can foster support for incumbents”. The UID-Aadhaar
and unified payment infrastructure proposed is an act in designing political
mechanisms to capture pre-existing schemes for political patronage in spite of
the absence of ‘legislative mechanisms’.
I submit that corroborating the concerns of the citizens,
the Parliamentary Committee has 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.” The Committee expressed its
anxiety that, the way the project had been run, “the scheme may end up being
dependent on private agencies, despite contractual agreement made by the UIDAI
with several private vendors.”
I submit that the parliamentary rejection of this scheme
came in the aftermath of the Statement of Concern issued in the matter of
world's biggest data management project, Unique Identification (UID) /Aadhaar
Number scheme and related proposals like National Intelligence Grid by 17
eminent citizens led by Justice V R Krishna Iyer. The NIAI Bill, 2010
which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on December 3, 2010 after the
constitution of the UIDAI and appointment of Shri Nilekani as its Chairman in
the rank and status of a Cabinet Minister without oath of secrecy. The Bill
sought to provide statutory status to the UIDAI which has been functioning
without backing of law since January 2009. At present UIDAI is functioning
without any legislative mandate.
I submit that one day ahead of the launch of UID in
Nandurbar District of Maharashtra on September 29, 2010, the statement of
eminent citizens had asked for the project to be put on hold till a feasibility
study was done, a cost: benefit analysis undertaken, a law of privacy put in
place and the various concerns of surveillance, tracking, profiling, tagging
and convergence of data be addressed. None of this has happened till today. The
Parliamentary Committee endorsed these concerns and recognised that the project
cannot carry on till this is set right. Many countries UK, China, USA,
Australia and the Philippines have abandoned such identity schemes.
I submit that Shri Nilekani, as a member or chairperson of
multiple committees of several ministries, has been trying to push for the
adoption of the UID, and for the re-engineering of current systems to fit the
does not meet the requirements of the UID. There have been attempts to withdraw
services such as LPG and other essential commodities if a person has not
enrolled for a UID. The state governments and citizens have been kept in dark
about the harmful ramifications of the world's biggest data management project
and how it linked with hitherto undisclosed other proposed legislations and
initiatives. The UID number and related proposals pose a threat to both civil
liberties as well as our natural resources like land as is evident from Land
Titling Bill and Nilekani’s book that aims to create a common land market to
reduce poverty.
I submit that Shri Nilekani's promotion of Hernando de
Sotto's book 'The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West
and Fails Everywhere Else' through his own book Imagining India
arguing that national ID system would be a big step for land markets to
facilitate right to property and undoing of abolition of right to property in
1978 in order to bring down poverty! Nilekani and the UPA government should be
asked as to explain the inexplicability of such assumptions.
I submit that schemes like UIDs have been abandoned in the
US, Australia and UK. The reasons have predominantly been: costs and privacy.
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’. The
Supreme Court of Philippines struck down a biometric based national ID system
as 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.
I submit that the Parliamentary Committee observes,
“The clearance of the Ministry of Law & Justice for issuing aadhaar
numbers, pending passing the Bill by Parliament, on the ground that powers of
the Executive are co-extensive with the legislative power of the Government and
that the Government is not debarred from exercising its Executive power in the
areas which are not regulated by the legislation does not satisfy the
Committee. The Committee are constrained to point out that in the instant case,
since the law making is underway with the bill being pending, any executive
action is as unethical and violative of Parliament‟s
prerogatives.” The committee also observed that a National Data Protection Law
is “a pre-requisite for any law that deals with large scale collection of
information from individuals and its linkages across separate databases. It
would be difficult to deal with the issues like access and misuse of personal
information, surveillance, profiling, linking and matching of data bases and securing
confidentiality of information etc.“
I submit that in a significant development following
rigorous deliberations, an Indian development support organization founded in
1960, Indo-Global Social Service Society (IGSSS) disassociated itself from UID
Number project which was being undertaken under Mission Convergence in
Delhi. Withdrawal of IGSSS that works in 21 states of the country merits
the attention of all the states and civil society organisations especially
those who are unwittingly involved in the UID Number enrollment process. In its
withdrawal letter IGSSS said, “we will not be able to continue to do UID
enrolment…” It added, it is taking step because ‘it's hosted under the rubric
of UNDP's "Innovation Support for Social Protection: Institutionalizing
Conditional Cash Transfers" [Award ID: 00049804, Project: 00061073;
Confer: Output 1, Target 1.2 (a) & Output 3 (a), (b)]. In fact we had no
clue of this until recently when we searched the web and got this information.’
It is clear that both Mission Convergence and UIDAI have
been hiding these crucial facts with ulterior motives. The letter reads, “IGSSS
like many other leading civil society groups and individuals are opposed to
conditional cash transfers and the UID will be used to dictate it.”
I submit that the Parliamentary Standing Committee
considered the NIAI Bill, 2010 presented its report to the Parliament on
December 13, 2011. The reported rejects biometric data based identification of
Indians. The report is a severe indictment of the hasty and `directionless'
project which has been "conceptualised with no clarity of purpose".
Even the functional basis of the Unique Identification Authority of India UIDAI
is unclear and yet the project has been rolled out. The Standing Committee
found the biometric technology `uncertain' and 'untested'. As early as December
2009, the Biometric Data Committee had found that the error rate using
fingerprints was inordinately high. In a recent interview to the press, the
Director General and Mission Director of the UIDAI had admitted that
fingerprints are likely not to work for authentication. The error rate could
end up excluding up to 15% of the population. It has also come to light that
even iris scan keeps changing and is unreliable. Yet, the UIDAI has gone on
with the exercise. Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) had appeared
before the Parliamentary Committee to give its testimony on the UID BIll.
I wish to draw your attention towards the message of Shri Deep
Joshi, member, National Advisory Council (NAC) sent to CFCL saying, “I would
have liked to make an additional point about the perspective Adhaar reflects
vis-a-vis governance of our country and the conduct of our society. The only
inference one can reasonably draw is that the votaries of this idea expect the
Indian state to perpetually or for a long time remain in the ‘mai-baap’ role,
personally taking care of each of its needy children. Why else would we want to
spend so much money on a device only meant to enable the ‘mai-baap’ to correctly
identify its children?” Other NAC members like Smt Aruna Roy have also been
vociferously opposed to centralization of governance through schemes like UID.
Clearly, the views of these members too have been ignored.
I submit that the electoral engineering underway through
conditional cash transfers will distort fair electoral practice and harm the
electoral democracy irreparably. Most political parties including the constituents
of UPA and non-UPA parties have been caught unawares into implementing the UID-Aadhaar
related schemes program which is designed to their political disadvantage in
the States.
In view of these indisputable facts, Election Commission must
act to ensure a level playing field for all the political parties especially
the non-UPA parties and non Congress parties.
Yours faithfully
Gopal Krishna
Member
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties
(CFCL)
Mb: 9818089660
Phone: +91-11-2651781,
Fax:+91-11-26517814
Shri H.S.Brahma, Election Commissioner, Election Commission of India
Dr. Nasim Zaidi, Election Commissioner, Election
Commission of India
Ms. Mamata Banerjee , Chairperson, President, All
India Trinamool Congress
Shri Naveen
Patnaik, President, Biju Janata Dal
Shri Sharad Ydav, President, Janata Dal (United)
Shri, Nitin Gadkari, President, Bhartiya Janata
Party
Shri Mulyam Singh Yadav, President, Samajwadi Party
Ms Mayawati, President, Bahujan Samaj Party
Shri Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, General Secretary,
Communist Party of India
Shri Prakash Karat, General Secretary, Communist
Party of India (Marxist)
Shri Sharad Pawar, President, Nationalist Congress
Party
Dr J Jayalalitha, President, All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam
Shri Nara Chandrababu Naidu, President, Telugudesam
Party
Shri Kalva Kuntla Chandrasekhar Rao, President, Telangana
Rashtra Samithi
Shri Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary,
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation
Shri Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, Socialist Unity
Centre of India (Communist)
Ms Medha Patkar, Convener, National Alliance of
Peoples Movements
Ms Aruna Roy, Member, National Campaign for Peoples’
Right to Information
Shri Chittaranjan Singh, General Secretary, Indian
Social Action Forum
Shri Arvind Kejriwal, Member, India Against
Corruption
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