NEW DELHI: Brute majority aside, the Centre managed to pass the Aadhaar Amendment Bill with the support of key regional parties — the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), Janata Dal (S), YSR Congress and the AIADMK — largely because a quiet concession that came in the form of an amendment to the ordinance promulgated in March.While moving the Bill in the Lok Sabha last week, the government slipped in an extra clause Section 5A that stated: “In section 7 of the principal Act, after the words ‘the Consolidated Fund of India’, the words ‘or the Consolidated Fund of State’ shall be inserted.”This minor change meant a big deal for states, because it removed the ambiguity on whether Aadhaar data could be used by state governments for their own schemes. Essentially, the earlier provision could be interpreted as applying only to schemes funded by the Centre through the Consolidated Fund of India.There was a question mark over those schemes funded through the Consolidated Fund of the State. States like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Odisha had big state-funded schemes which used Aadhaar data.The matter came up in March itself after the ordinance remained silent on the issue. Informed sources told ET that at the point, the UIDAI too was reluctant to take the onus of state governments being compliant with the SC requirement.The Karnataka government officially wrote to the Centre in March on this issue and its chief minister HD Kumaraswamy was the first to take it up after the general elections through a letter to IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on June 20.He brought it to Centre’s notice that the state government had spent “time, efforts and funds for Aadhaar infrastructure creation” and that they should also have the “privilege to use this data”.The Naveen Patnaik government in Odisha and the newly elected Jaganmohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh also raised the matter with the Centre. The contention from the states was that the SC order did not make any distinction between services provided by the Centre and the state. This set off internal deliberations within the government and a call was taken after final consultations with the Prime Minister’s Office to introduce this section while tabling the fresh Bill before the Lok Sabha following the lapse of the earlier ordinance.As a result, support came. “Aadhaar has helped millions of people get the benefit of welfare schemes like KALIA scheme in Odisha,” said BJD MP Prasantha Nanda while suggesting that the government bring a more robust data protection bill in near future.YSR Congress MP Vijay Sai Reddy tried to spread the credit while supporting the Bill: “Former PM Rajiv Gandhi said that out of Re1 spent by the government only few paise reaches to the real people on ground. Probably keeping this in mind the earlier UPA government had brought Aadhaar and now the BJP government is taking it forward. This bill has to be supported.”