tech2 News Staff

Update: According to TimesNow, the UIDAI has now blacklisted CSC e-governance Services India Ltd. UIDAI CEO, Ajay Bhushan Pandey said that the centre that leaked the cricketer's data has now been blacklisted for a period of 10 years.

Promoting the Aadhaar system is indeed a good deed. Promoting the Aadhaar system using a celebrity like cricketer is an even bigger push for the government's nationwide identification system. But sharing his application form and details on Twitter to gain attention? Not such a great idea; as both an agency that took the data and the IT Minister soon discovered.

In fact, both the agency, called CSC e-governance Services India Ltd (CSC), and the IT Minister had to face the wrath of not MS Dhoni, but the cricketer's wife for sharing his personal data via a tweet.

Former India Cricket Captain @msdhoni updated his Aadhaar details with a home visit by a CSC VLE. A fan moment for Ahsan Ali. @rsprasad pic.twitter.com/bMc3YZQENT — CSCeGov (@CSCegov_) March 28, 2017

While the photo of the cricketer and a CSC agency representative getting his biometric data into the system may have actually promoted the Aadhaar identification service, a photo of his personal application form while being fed into a PC was certainly not. The Jharkhand cricketer's wife took to Twitter complaining about the agency to the Union Law & Justice and IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad. Her tweet was pretty much spot on. She simply asked the minister "... is there any privacy left?" In what may seem like perfect timing, the breach of privacy comes at a time when the Aadhaar system had recently come under the scanner for data leaks thanks to its trusted agencies that obtain the biometric data.

@rsprasad Sir I m talking about the application which was tweeted along with picture by @CSCegov_ pic.twitter.com/EHYwzfzfKR — Sakshi Singh ❤️ (@SaakshiSRawat) March 28, 2017

And it was not just CSC that tweeted out the data, but even the IT Minister who seemed to have retweeted the same tweet, not realising what had been done with a simple retweet.

Sakshi Singh was quick to tweet back explaining that it is not the photo that she was worried about but the application form details that leaked out some of his personal data.

Soon after that, the IT Minister thanked Singh for bringing it to his notice and said that "serious action will be taken against this."

To add to the mayhem around privacy, Congress general secretary Digivijaya Singh jumped to the opportunity to shame Prasad.

In response to the Aadhaar-related issue, the Singh tweeted out, stating that Sakhshi had every right to be upset. "IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad leaks MS Dhoni's Adhaar Card details. Shameful. He should apologise immediately and another Aadhaar Card should be made for Dhoni. His wife Sakshi is fully justified to be angry and upset," read the tweet.