Home India 200 people in Meghalaya seek to ‘opt out’ of Aadhaar

200 people in Meghalaya seek to ‘opt out’ of Aadhaar

The committee includes representatives of the powerful Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), civil society collective Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR), as well as other individuals and organisations.

A group of citizens in Meghalaya is asserting their right to be forgotten by the Aadhaar database. Two hundred people — all of whom have been assigned unique identification numbers — on Monday signed up for a campaign to “opt out” of Aadhaar, which was launched in Shillong by the Meghalaya People’s Committee on Aadhaar. In letters written to the UIDAI, they have stated that they no longer consent to be registered on the Aadhaar database.

The draft of the letter sent to the UIDAI asks it to “delete all the biometric, demographic, authentication and any other data that is on the UIDAI data base, and inform [me] when this is done; inform me of any places where my UID number has been ‘seeded’; inform any agency where my UID number has been seeded that they are to delete the number from their data base… and that I do not consent to my data being used by you or any third party, or be shared with any third party, and any consent that may be recorded as having been given by me stands withdrawn forthwith”.

The committee includes representatives of the powerful Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), civil society collective Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR), as well as other individuals and organisations.

The KSU has, for long, opposed the Aadhaar project on the ground that it might provide illegal immigrants a way to claim citizenship — and upset the demographic balance of the tribal state. “We are more concerned about matters of privacy and surveillance. The committee is a way for people of different ideologies to come together to oppose Aadhaar,” said Tarun Bhartiya, a member of TUR, which describes itself as a collective of progressive individuals.

“When you sign up for Aadhaar, you are not asked whether you agree/disagree to your biometric data being used and linked to other databases or used by a third party-and that is one of the big problems with Aadhaar. Your PAN, for instance, is not seeded into other databases. When we send this letter to UIDAI, saying that we withdraw our consent to our data being used by other parties, we want to see how they will respond. If the UIDAI says that they deny our consent, we might think of approaching the courts, especially after the Supreme Court judgment on privacy,” said Tarun Bhartiya of TUR.

“As far as we are concerned, the Right to Privacy judgment is the end of Aadhaar,” said Reverend K Pyrtuh, a member of the committee. “The Meghalaya People’s Committee on Aadhaar has been fighting this for a long time. The fact is that in the past few years, people have been forced to enrol with Aadhaar by government agencies, almost at gunpoint. Even when the SC kept saying it was not mandatory, and that those who don’t have Aadhaar should be left in peace, the government kept insisting that people be enrolled,” he said.

In a public meeting in Shillong last Monday, the committee also paid respects to Santoshi, the 11-year-old girl in Simdega, Jharkhand, who allegedly died of starvation because their family was denied rations since “their Aadhaar card” was not linked to the PDS system.

“The people need to be informed that they have nothing to fear. The Centre has instructed states that no food/ration/subsidy can be denied on those grounds, as has happened in Jharkhand. We have been telling people that there are many circulars that are also in your favour,” said Pyrtuh.

The Aadhaar project of enrolling citizens has been least successful in the states of Meghalaya and Assam. Both have the lowest Aadhaar saturation rates — 14.3 per cent and 7.1 per cent, respectively, according to data available on the UIDAI website.

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