NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court asked UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey whether the authority had data on failure of Aadhaar authentication leading to denial of financial benefits or deprivation of foodgrain to citizens.

Referring to petitioners’ citing several instances of starvation deaths, denial of pension and rejection of admission to schools for want of Aadhaar authentication, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan asked, “UIDAI can detect failure of authentication. But do you come to know where financial benefits are denied? Is there official data on how many were denied financial benefits?” Pandey said the UIDAI had been pleading with all ministries not to deny anyone financial benefits because of authentication failure.

Justice Sikri said, “Take for example a person goes to a ration shop in a remote area, where even though the authentication is done, the ration shop owner says it has failed. The woman goes away and the ration shop owner draws ration in her name. Can this be stopped?” Pandey said, “That is the precise reason why the unfortunate death of a woman happened in Jharkhand. Despite approval of her Aadhaar authentication, the ration shop owner asked her to come the next day and drew ration in her name. This is a problem caused by human greed and corruption. This is not because of Aadhaar, which cannot solve every problem. This has to be tackled by other means at the local level. “We will never be able to achieve 100% authentication as it involves technology, machines, connectivity and power back up. Failure of any of these can lead to failure of authentification. But we have made provision in the Aadhaar Act that failure of authentication is no ground to deny financial benefits. The benefits are to be given after entering failure of authentication in the exception list.”

Pandey said Aadhaar took concrete shape in 2009 and the first card was issued in 2010.

“We were enrolling 20 lakh persons for Aadhaar daily, but with 120 crore people already enrolled, the daily enrolment figure has come down to 2 lakh. The Aadhaar data is fully under our control and the storage software is not connected to the internet, thus eliminating hacking risk. For authenitcation, we do not send biometrics to the point of authentication,” he said.

“Aadhaar is a 12-digit number randomly issued to residents. There is no geographical coding for anyone to ascertain whether a person belongs to a particular region. There is no data on the person’s religion. We do not share Aadhaar data with investigating agencies. National Investigation Agency has never asked for Aadhaar data. The CBI had moved Bombay HC for Aadhaar data and was permitted to get it. We immediately moved the SC and got it stayed. We operate on a solemn promise that Aadhaar data cannot be shared with anyone,” Pandey said. He will continue his presentation on Tuesday.

