Rajya Sabha Member raises concerns over Aadhaar database

Rajya Sabha Member Rajeev Chandrasekhar has expressed concern over Aadhaar database, saying it is "very poorly verified" and it should not be the sole KYC document for entering financial system.

"The numerous fake Aadhaar entries in the Aadhaar database, including the recent Pakistani spies who had Aadhaar cards issued in fake names with their biometrics shows that the Aadhaar database is a very poorly verified database in terms of identifying the person whose biometrics are in the database," Chandrasekhar said in a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and RBI Governor Urjit Patel.

The MP said that he is sure that the government and the Reserve Bank of India is aware of this point as well.
 

"The RBI must ensure Aadhaar can and must be used only along with other proof of ID for people to enter the financial system," he said.

Expressing concern over IT infrastructure, Chandrasekhar said, "There are serious gaps in the IT Act and the dispute resolution institutions like the Cyber Appellate Tribunal (CyAT)."

CyAT has been without chairperson since July 2011 and government is now planning to merge it with telecom tribunal TDSAT.

Chandrasekhar said that as the large parts of our economy and transactions are moved online, there will legitimate issues of transaction fraud, data security, privacy and disputes between consumers and banks, banks and banks, merchants and consumers, merchants and banks etc will explode in volume.

"The data security issue in itself represents a serious challenge to our Banking system and the RBI must work with Government to plan pro-actively on issues of infrastructure, capacity building and legislative requirements to deter and prosecute the perpetrators," he said.

He also asked Finance Minister and RBI governor to pay attention towards digital black economy with surge of domestic trade in black money.

"There are already reports of a surge in Domestic bitcoin trade and move of black economy to the Dark Internet. The surveillance and policing requirements are challenging and I suspect the Government and RBI are ill-equipped currently to deal with this. I am drawing your attention to the need to be ahead of the curve on this rather than behind," he said.