RTI finds chinks in Aadhar-linked gas supply

After the over enthusiastic administration made people run around by linking Aadhar card with Gas supply, it has now come to light that the gas agencies never even accessed the Aadhar database to verify the authenticity of the Aadhar cardholders.

Worse, the agencies have given away the subsidies after just checking with the banks concerned, raising serious questions over bogus beneficiaries.

This major flip-flop was exposed in a case hearing at the Central Information Commission (CIC) pertaining to a Hyderabad based RTI activist, C.J. Karira against UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India).

Mr. Karira had approached the CIC over unsatisfactory reply from UIDAI to some of his queries.

“The respondents (Aadhar official) stated that the use of the UID number, provided by the appellant to his gas agency and bank, was for the limited purpose of ensuring that the person being provided the gas cylinders and subsidy was the same. It did not involve authentication/matching by those agencies with the data held by the respondents,” read one of the contents of the order passed on March 18, 2014 after the completion of arguments from both sides. It also came to light that the UIDAI does not have a procedure in place for those who want to get their data surrendered or deleted from the database.

“The Aadhar is a national fraud which caused a loss of Rs 500 crore. What is the use of forcing people to waste their time and energy to take Aadhar card for gas subsidies when the gas agencies do not even check the database,” wondered Mr. Karira.

The RTI activist also realised that anybody could get a gas subsidy by telling random Aadhar number.

“I was also shocked to know that UIDAI does not have a fool proof system to record all those accessing the data raising security concerns. How can they not have a mechanism to delete Aadhar users when the Supreme Court has declared that Aadhar is not mandatory?” he asked.