As the centre is making Aadhaar card mandatory to avail its non-welfare schemes like the opening of bank accounts, the filing of tax returns, the question that often arises is how secure it is. In a recent incident of a massive data breach, information of millions of citizens is now available on the website of Jharkhand Directorate of Social Security.
According to a report in Hindustan Times , due to some programming error, the information of the pensioners of Jharkhand’s old age pension scheme like their name, address, details of bank account and Aadhaar numbers is available on the site.
Out of 1.6 million beneficiaries of pension in Jharkhand, 1.4 million have directly linked their bank accounts with Aadhar card. Now, the information of all of the beneficiaries is available as soon as one logs into it.
Reacting to the incident, MS Bhatia, secretary of the state’s social welfare department said, “We got to know about it this week itself. Our programmers are working on it, and the matter should be addressed very soon.”
This incident has come few days after Sakshi Dhoni, wife of former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni took to twitter after she got to know that details of her husband’s Aadhar card were leaked online. She then tweeted to Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad about it, who assured swift action in the matter. After which UIDAI blacklisted the agency for 10 years that leaked the information of Dhoni’s Aadhaar card.
Supreme Court on April 21 had pulled up Centre and questioned how Aadhar can be made mandatory when the apex court has passed the order to make it optional.
