The government is fully committed to protecting the privacy of individuals and the data protection bill will further strengthen the legal framework around privacy, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday. The concerns and doubts around Aadhaar have already been addressed “meticulously” and the biometric ID has led to inclusive development, bringing full benefit of government schemes to the poor and marginalised, the minister said.
“The concerns which were there (on Aadhaar) have already been addressed very meticulously, through a very long process in which the Supreme Court judgement came, lots of regulations have been made. Those things have been settled. The data protection bill will further strengthen that legal framework,” Vaishnaw said while speaking at an event to inaugurate the three-day workshop ‘Aadhaar 2.0’. The government is “very” committed to protecting the privacy of citizens and residents, he emphasised.
The minister, however, did not comment on concerns raised by some opposition MPs who gave dissent notes to the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, after the panel adopted its report at its meeting on Monday.
Asked about the concerns raised over the certain provisions of the data protection bill, the minister, declined to comment saying, “the Joint Committee of Parliament has completed their deliberations, they will be presenting… report to the Parliament… then only one should comment.”
After nearly two years of deliberations, the Parliamentary panel on Monday adopted the report on the bill, which will provide the government with powers to give exemptions to its probe agencies from the provisions of the proposed PDP Act, a move opposed by opposition MPs who filed their dissent notes.
Congress leader and chief whip of the party in Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh was among the four MPs from the Congress besides two MPs from the Trinamool Congress and one from the Biju Janata Dal who submitted their dissent notes on the report of the committee, headed by P P Chaudhary.
The bill, seeking to provide for the protection of personal data of individuals and establish a Data Protection Authority for the same, was brought in Parliament in 2019 and was referred to the joint committee for further scrutiny on the demand of opposition members.
As per the PDP Bill, the central government can exempt its agencies from the provisions of the Act for protecting national interests and for protecting the security of the state, public order, sovereignty and integrity of India. Earlier, while inaugurating the Aadhaar workshop, Vaishnaw noted that the biometric ID has made a fundamental and meaningful difference in the lives of millions of people.
The IT minister exhorted stakeholders to come up with ways where other countries that face similar social and economic challenges as India, can use the technology and learnings from Aadhaar to improve lives of their citizens.
“This is a technology which is agnostic to geographies… which can be easily transported, used and scaled up and can make meaningful difference for people living in those geographies. How to use that opportunity,” he said.
The minister also mooted the idea of “international identification standards”, given that the society is getting increasingly digitised. “Should we think about having international standards for identification. I am very keen to understand and get feedback from experts on this,” he said.
Further, the minister called for new technologies that would be make authentication feature even more affordable for people. “Can we create technolgies and software systems that will make Aadhaar even more afforadable,” he noted.
In a virtual message during the inaugural event, Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) mooted several ideas related to Aadhaar.
“These include role of Aadhaar in transformation of electrical grid system that requires discoms to be healthy… for which electricity subsidies to go directly go into the bank accounts of beneficiaries; direct benefit transfers to the forest residents-for preserving biodiversity and forests; and portability of social security systems,” an official release said.
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