VIJAYAWADA: Former secretary to the Government of India EAS Sarma has written a letter to AP Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Information Technology, seeking action against all those involved in unauthorised use of Aadhaar data by IT Grids Private Limited as it is a serious breach of public trust. In the letter, the former bureaucrat said if the ministry fails to take action, it may have to face a legal battle.
Referring to his letter to the Minister on March 3 on the unauthorised use of Aadhaar data by IT Grids and its possible link to a political party’s (TDP) App in Andhra Pradesh, Sarma said Telangana police have found that 7.82 crore digital records of Aadhaar data and voter IDs belonging to individuals of both the Telugu States were in possession of the company.
Pointing out that it is a case of violation of individual privacy by authorities, committed either deliberately or otherwise, he said both UIDAI and ECI need to provide satisfactory explanation to the people of AP and Telangana, irrespective of which private company has stolen the data and which political party has misused it.
Referring to his earlier letter, Sarma expressed surprise that the ministry has not cared to review the appointment of J Satyanarayana, who is the Chairman of UIDAI, as the senior advisor of e-Governance and IT department of the AP government. “While I have no intention of questioning the integrity of the officer, the Ministry of IT cannot gloss over the conflict of interest as already pointed out in the letter,” he said.
The activist said some local UIDAI officers in Hyderabad have lodged a police complaint against IT Grids, but that is not adequate. “Without UIDAI officer’s connivance, IT Grids would not get possession of 7.82 crore digital records and voter IDs, violating all norms of the privacy of individuals,” he asserted and demanded that cases should be filed against all those in the UIDAI who could have connived with the private company, any political party responsible and all those officers in AP government who could have facilitated the data theft.
Meanwhile, YSRC leader and PAC chairman Bugana Rajendranath Reddy said officials of UIDAI lodging a complaint with police in Hyderabad clearly shows data theft has happened and government officials were involved. Party general secretary Dadi Veerabhadra Rao said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu was protecting the IT Grid CEO, main accused in the data theft case. Stating that theft of personal data of people was an anti-national act, he demanded a thorough probe into the entire issue.
On April 12, UIDAI Deputy Director (Hyderabad) T Bhavani Prasad lodged a complaint with Hyderabad police for unauthorised use of Aadhaar data. In the complaint, it was said that the structure and size of the database is surprisingly similar to that of databases that could have been originally owned by the UIDAI. Seven hard disks with large database seized from the premises of IT Grids office and other digital evidence were sent to Telangana State Forensic Science Laboratory (TSFSL) for forensic examination. TSFSL, in its reports, has categorically stated that the seized hard disks contain a database of a large number of records pertaining to Aadhaar numbers in a particular structural database. It was discovered that a whopping 7,82,21,297 records of Aadhar data belonging to Telangana and AP were used by IT Grids for TDP’s SEVA Mitra App.