The Justice Srikrishna Committee on Data Protection under Appendix had provided a comprehensive recommendation for amendment of the Aadhaar Act (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act 2016. These recommendations were not included in the draft Bill for PDPA 2018 which the Committee submitted. Subsequently the Aadhaar judgement of the Supreme Court (Refer the series of articles) gave certain recommendations which prevented the use of Aadhaar services by private sector including the Banks.
After taking into consideration the recommendations of the Srikrishna Committee and the Judgement of the Supreme Court, the Government came up with a draft Bill . However the Bill could not be passed through Rajyasabha and would lapse soon.
In order to therefore alleviate the problems created by the Supreme Court Judgement on the industry, Government has come up with an ordinance to implement some of the recommendations of the Srikrishna Committee by promulgating an “Ordinance” on 28th February 2019.
The ordinance provides for “Offline Verification of Aadhaar number” after obtaining the consent of the individual and using only the demographic information with safe guards for the information to be used only for the purpose for which it is sought.
Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act has been omitted in deference to the wishes of the Supreme Court.
The ordinance will provide the option of the use of offline Verification without authentication to verify the demographic information about an individual who provides consent to an agency to use the Aadhaar number .
Hopefully this will mitigate some of the immediate problems of the industry. However, some murmurs are being heard about challenging the ordinance in the Supreme Court and we need to wait and see how things develop.
Naavi
Reference Articles:
10:Aadhar Judgement-10: Let us debate the changes required in PDPA 2018
9: Aadhaar Judgement-9: Definition of Personal Information revised?
8: Aadhaar Judgement-8: Limited use
7: Aadhaar Judgement-7… Can the Private Sector use Aadhaar for Authentication?
6. Aadhaar Judgement-6.. Joint Secretary is too junior?:
5:Aadhaar Judgement-5…Collection of Metadata
4:Aadhaar Judgement…4… Making the life of law enforcement difficult…
3:Aadhaar Judgement..3.. Data retention limit of 6 months..
2:Aadhaar Judgement….2.. The Answers and Conclusions of the majority
1.Aadhaar Judgement…1… Debate the areas where clarity is required.
Other References
Aadhaar Act : Srikrishna Committee Suggestions in Appendix : Aadhaar Amendment Bill :Aadhaar Amendment Ordinance
