Now, you can link your Aadhaar until 31st March 2018 as per government’s new notification released on Wednesday. The financial service providers were going all out to link your aadhaar with almost everything. The government has extended the deadline until March 2018 as directed by the supreme court of India.
The matter was in the discussion in the court, where government argued about linking of aadhaar as mandatory to all the Indians if they want to avail services provided by banks, mobile companies, and government. aadhaar became the key to all the services of our life. People were also frustrated about the way mobile companies were messaging incessantly to link aadhaar with their mobile number. This notification provides a relief to all the users who were disgruntled by the way the government was forcing the aadhaar down our throat.
The Life with aadhaar
Aadhaar is the biometric identity card which records a person’s details on the computer. It was compared to be one of the biggest and authentic databases of Indians, which could be used for offering a slew of services and many other benefits. People were a little sceptic about the security of their data, given the track record of government agencies. Private agencies were employed in the process of aadhaar registration which makes the situation even worse. there have been many cases of data theft and leak from the aadhaar card database.
A famous example includes MS Dhoni, where his wife shared the incident on the twitter about the data leak through aadhaar of his husband. Many other such cases exist in India where people’s details have been sold to private companies for personal profits. The present government which is so adamant on the aadhaar linkage to everything in our life was totally against the aadhaar when it was in the opposition. The supreme court’s constitutional bench will hear the case.
It will decide the legality of aadhaar card. The petitioners in the case argued that government must give assurance that it will not follow any coercive measure to ask people to link aadhaar to everything. The bench comprises of Chief justice of India, Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan. This case will be heard today.
The Future Of The Aadhaar
As supreme court’s constitutional bench decides the legality of aadhaar, Ministry of Finance released the statement saying that the linking of aadhaar has not stopped but only the date has been extended. A few days ago, many reports of people dying due to hunger hit the headlines. The reason cited was aadhaar. Concerned people could not get his ration due to the non-availability of aadhaar.
Incidents like these force people to think about the ways an aadhaar can be manipulated to strike out the people out of the system. The grievance redressal mechanism of such process is very weak and inefficient. Tomorrow you may not be able to get your benefits just because someone stole your aadhaar identity, or your aadhaar number does not match the database. The government in its argument proposed that the public’s data will be used for their safety only, and there is no need to panic. But, given the reports and incident happening around the country, we are forced to wonder if that’s truth or a joke.
