Hindu Business Line: New Delhi: Friday, August 18, 2017.
Contesting
the government’s claims on the food security benefits of Aadhaar reaching
millions of people as well on privacy issues and terming their findings as
“skewed”, activist groups have written a letter to UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan
Pandey urging him to organise a public discussion on the matter.
In the public
platform, “evidence on the impact of biometric authentication and use of
Aadhaar in the delivery of public services can be presented in the public
domain,” says the letter written by Anjali Bhardwaj, Nikhil Dey, among others
belonging to Satark Nagrik Sangathan, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Right to
Food Campaign and Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan.
The letter is
in response to reports quoting Pandey as saying that the findings released by
the activists at a press conference “arise from a skewed approach” and
“misinterpretations”. He is also said to have declared that “to claim that
Aadhaar is responsible for denial is a misconstrued fact presented with
malafide intent”.
In the
letter, the activists said they had been working long years with socially and
economically marginalised communities in rural and urban India and had released
documentation and evidence obtained under the RTI Act, interim findings from a
field study conducted by IIT Delhi in collaboration with Ranchi University
indicating continued quantity fraud, higher transaction costs and hardship as
well as exclusion in the PDS in Jharkhand, among other testimonies.
“Had Aadhaar
been a means of inclusion, empowerment, anti-corruption and efficiency in
delivering entitlements to the poor and marginalised, we would have had no
hesitation in presenting what we saw, and congratulating the government for its
success,” said the letter, calling upon the UIDAI head to join them in a public
dialogue.
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