NEW DELHI: On the day the government extended the deadline to link Aadhar with bank accounts, activists started a website on Wednesday called speakforme.in. Using this, citizens can write to their MPs, banks, mobile operators, and other government service providers to complain about repeated calls and messages from various entities asking citizens to link their

numbers with various services.

Number of emails sent crossed the 1,000 mark in little over three hours of the website going live, said those who started it. At least 780 of these were sent to MPs.

The website is being run by a group of about 90 volunteers, many of whom also participated in the campaign for net neutrality two years ago. Chief among them is Bengaluru-based IT professional Kiran Jonnalagadda.

“We want

to discuss this. Everyone has been receiving harassing SMSes and calls to link their Aadhaar to mobile phones and bank accounts. This is coercion. The technology behind Aadhaar is broken in various ways. Coercion will make it worse. It has to be fixed before it is forced on people,” says Jonnalagadda. The winter session of Parliament starts later this week.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of

.com, is also part of the team behind speakforme.in.

“If all your services are linked to it, then Aadhaar becomes a kill switch. You can be disconnected by the government for no reason. There is also the issue of mass surveillance, when Aadhaar is used along with NATGRID, which is a surveillance system the government is setting up,” says Pahwa.

When writing to an MP, a user can select his or her state and constituency from a drop down menu. Using publicly available information about MPs online, the website pulls out the relevant MP’s email address. The user can then send a template email demanding that Aadhaar be made non-mandatory. The letter can be edited and customised before sending as well. The website has similar separate template mails to send to mobile operators, banks and to government departments for PAN, LPG connections, EPFO, etc.

“I demand that Aadhaar be made non-mandatory, as the

has already ordered in 2015, and there should be an opt-out clause which would allow those who don’t want to be a part of the system to get out,” said a part of the template letter for MPs.

These letters can be edited and customised before sending too. As of Wednesday evening, petitions could be sent in Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada. Jonnalagadda said more volunteer translators are coming on board for other Indian languages.