Govt. introduces Aadhaar amendment bill in Lok Sabha

New Delhi, Jan : The government on Wednesday introduced an amendment bill in Lok Sabha to provide legal backing for voluntary seeding of biometric Aadhaar ID with mobile numbers and bank accounts after the Supreme Court barred mandatory use of the 12-digit unique identifier by private firms.

          As the Oppositions raised concerns, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asserted that the proposed amendment is in compliance with the Supreme Court judgement and that there will be no infringement of privacy.

          He also said that the government has prepared a data protection bill and it will be introduced in Parliament soon.

          Regarding privacy issue, he said privacy is “not being invaded at all” from these amendments. The parallel authentication norms is there to safeguard privacy issues, he added.

          Objections were raised on the bill by Shashi Tharoor (INC), Saugata Roy (Trinamool Congress) and N K Premachandran (RSP).

          The proposed amendment will circumvent that judgement and it was brought without stakeholders’ consultation, he claimed, adding “the bill should not be introduced”.

          The Minister said these objection are “misplaced” and “we are not violating the Supreme Court” judgement.