Biometric National Population Register (NPR) Is Aadhaar By Another Name By Gopal Krishna

Biometric National Population Register (NPR) Is Aadhaar By Another Name

By Gopal Krishna

20 June, 2014
Countercurrents.org

How Rajnath Singh is wrong about Biometric NPR, the Prime Minister is right.
No lessons being learnt from misuse of electoral database and census
data by Big Data companies

New Delhi: In a letter written to Minister of Home Affairs (MHA),
Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL) has submitted that Shri
Narendra Modi had opposed biometric National Population Register (NPR)
in his letter to Dr Manmohan Singh on October 6, 2011. It has argued
that MHA’s support for 12 digit biometric aadhaar number generating
NPR makes Indians worse than prisoners, violates Citizenship Act,
Census Act and constitutional rights.

Isn’t there a compelling reason for MHA, RGI and all the concerned
ministers and officials in the government to read the letter of Shri
Narendra Modi to understand why he had opposed biometric NPR not? How
can MHA deprive itself of the wisdom of Shri Modi without facing any
consequence? If this government does not reconcile its actions in the
light of Shri Modi’s letter, it will tantamount to breach of citizens’
trust. It will set a dangerous and unhealthy precedent and in future
no one will believe even the written words of political leaders.

The MHA’s must explain as how is India’s NPR for identity cards
different from Identity Cards that has been abandoned in UK. There is
a need to guard against ID Card cartels and learn from the fate of
such databases in Egypt, Pakistan and Greece. It must set up a
committee to examine why countries like China, Australia and France
abandoned such ID projects.

CFCL had appeared before t he Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC)
on Finance that examined the National Identification Authority of
India Bill to legalize and legitimize aadhaar scheme. The PSC endorsed
the concerns about national security and citizens rights and
questioned and trashed the scheme.

The parliamentary committee had categorically raised question about
the absence of legal mandate for biometric data collection. The
parliamentary committee’s report observes, “The collection of
biometric information and its linkage with personal information of
individuals without amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955 as well as
the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National
Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, appears to be beyond the scope of
subordinate legislation, which needs to be examined in detail by
Parliament.”

Notably, the PSC’s report revealed that “Bharatiya - Automated Finger
Print Identification System (AFSI), was launched in January, 2009,
being funded by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of
Communications and Information Technology, for collection of biometric
information of the people of the country.” But admittedly the same is
not being used by UIDAI because according to the Government, “The
quality, nature and manner of collection of biometric data by other
biometric projects may not be of the nature that can be used for the
purpose of the aadhaar scheme and hence it may not be possible to use
the fingerprints captured under the Bhartiya-AFSI project.” It is
bizarre as why the parliamentary committee did not question AFSI
program of Ministry of Communications and Information Technology
headed by A Raja. How can this program be allowed to continue without
“amendment to the Citizenship Act, 1955”?
Despite such observation of the parliamentary committee, MHA’s support
for NPR is quite inexcusable.

Besides the Ministry of Planning in their written reply stated, “UIDAI
is adopting a multiple registrar approach and the Registrar General of
India (RGI) will be one of the Registrars of the UIDAI. To synergize
the two exercises, an Inter Ministerial Coordination Committee has
been set up to minimize duplication. The UIDAI is making all efforts
to synergize with National Population Register (NPR) exercise.” This
recorded reply illustrates that NDA government’s proposal for NPR and
UPA government’s aadhaar is simply the same rose with different names.

It is quite clear from the conceptual design that aadhaar and NPR is
one and the same. This feigned ignorance seems to demonstrate the
collusion between BJP and Congress on biometrically profiling Indians.
Admittedly, biometric data is a property. It is not surprising that
property dealers of all shapes and shades are visible on the horizon.

The examination of the terms of reference of UIDAI reveals it all. The
entire political class and citizenry was taken for a ride regarding a
so called turf war between the Ministry of Home Affairs and UIDAI
which media was made to understand that got resolved by diving the
Indian population in two parts of 60 crore for coverage under aadhaar
and the rest under National Population Register (NPR) which also
generates Aadhaar number. The fact is the terms of reference of the
UIDAI mandated it "take necessary steps to ensure collation of
National Population Register (NPR) with UID (as per approved
strategy)", to "identify new partner/user agencies", to "issue
necessary instructions to agencies that undertake creation of
databases… (to) enable collation and correlation with UID and its
partner databases" and UIDAI “shall own and operate the database". The
executive notification dated January 28, 2009 that set up UIDAI
mentions this. The entire exercise has been staged to hoodwink
unsuspecting Indians.

If there was still any doubt about the oneness of NPR and aadhaar, the
report of Press Trust of India of January 30, 2014 revealed the
proposal of the Planning Commission to allow UIDAI to start enrolments
in areas other than 18 states and Union Territories allocated to it.
The Commission's proposal is based on the view that this is required
to speed up collection of biometrics details of residents and for
issuing them Aadhaar numbers as well as a National Multi-purpose
Identity Cards (NMIC) based on NPR. It was reported, "The Commission
discussed the proposal with Registrar General of India (RGI) under the
Ministry of Home Affairs. They have agreed that UIDAI can be allowed
to enrol in some states where they are collecting biometrics details
of resident, to speed up enrolments."

It may be noted that the states and union territories where RGI is
enrolling residents and collecting their biometrics details under NPR
are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir,
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and
West Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadar and Nagar Haveli and
Lakshadweep. Notably, RGI is also enrolling residents in Udupi, Gadag,
Uttara Kannada, Haveri, Davangere, Bangalore rural, Chikkabalapur and
Kodagu districts of Karnataka. So far 14 crore Indians have been
enrolled under NPR.

UIDAI has been enrolling residents in Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Chandigarh,
Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,
Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, Puducherry,
Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Tripura. It claims that so far it has
enrolled 63 crore Indians.

Both NPR and aadhaar are online databases by design.

Now that it has been established that surveillance agencies of USA, UK
and their allies have dismantled firewalls created for online privacy
and encrypted Internet communications, the new government must
dismantle the illegitimate biometric database to undo the damage to
done to Indians by the previous government.

In its letter CFCL said, “even as the surveillance infrastructure that
was bulldozed by the previous government unfolded in India, UK’s
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in a speech in British House of
Commons said, “This government will end the culture of spying on its
citizens. It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are
regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop.
So there will be no ID card scheme. No national identity register, a
halt to second generation biometric passports,” He added, “We won’t
hold your internet and email records when there is just no reason to
do so. Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so
used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without
question. Schools will not take children’s fingerprints without even
asking their parent’s consent. This will be a government that is proud
when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the
state.” The speech of the British Deputy Prime Minister is available
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8691753.stm” It added,
“it is quite significant to take note of these developments to avoid
the fate of Shri Tony Blair and his UK’s Identity Cards Act, 2006.
Both have been abandoned.“

During the election campaign, BJP opposed biometric aadhaar in
strongest words. Now it is apparent that the MHA has accepted aadhaar
as irreversible and as a face saving stance it will have citizens
believe that it will not accept biometric aadhaar but will gladly do
so if it is mentioned as biometric NPR unmindful of Shri Modi’s
opposition to it.

The technological drive to ensure mastery over human beings is not
merely a by-product of a faulty political economy but also of a world
view which believes in the absolute control. It has become more and
more apparent that genocides, ecodisasters and ehtnocides are but the
underside of corrupt sciences and psychopathic technologies wedded to
new secular hierarchies, which have reduced major civilization to the
status of a set of empty rituals, observes Ashish Nandy in his book
The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism.

The lessons from database based genocides are part of recent world
history should not be forgotten in the face of a large section of
complicit and partisan corporate media especially those that regularly
received advertisements from UIDAI and its partners.

The MHA's initiative for biometric NPR reveals that no lessons are
being learnt from misuse of online electoral database and census data
by Big Data companies. The companies like FourthLion Technologies and
Modak Analytics have collected and analysed electoral data in the
absence of any data protection law. The latter analysed 18 tera bytes
of data and built India's first Big Data-based Electoral Data
Repository system and vetted about data related to 81 crore people to
help our client understand the electorate on a wide variety of aspects
such as caste, gender, age and economic status. We used all the
publicly available data provided by Election Commission and Census
figures.

For Details: Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (CFCL),
Mb: 09818089660, 08227816731, E-mail: gopalkrishna1715@gmail.com