The allocation of portfolios to the ministers in the Modi cabinet was delayed but finally fell into place. It was good to see Mr Amit Shah as Home Minister instead of the Finance Minister and Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman as the Finance Minister. The return of Mr Ravishankar Prasad as IT minister provides a much needed continuity so that the pending issues can be continued without much of a break.
In particular, return of Mr R S Prasad means that the Personal Data Protection Bill will be reintroduced at the earliest. It may still go to a standing committee but at least the process will be set in motion. Similarly in the last few months of the last Government, the opposition had created un necessary hurdles on the Intermediary Guidelines under IT 2008, Aadhaar and the Section 69 of ITA 2008 notifications. Now that Mr Prasad will be back, there would be a commitment to resolve all these pending issues.
On Aadhaar, the amendment bill which Srikrishna committee had suggested should be taken up on a priority. If necessary Government should go for a review with the Supreme Court to enable use of Aadhaar infrastructure more productively. (our views on the ordinance is available here)
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will not continue keep interfering in the day to day administration of the Government at the behest of the political opponents.
Naavi
Amendments to Aadhar is still not considering access issues. With full protection to data, the individual users should be allowed to access the data without intermediaries like operators.