Ravi Shankar Prasad dismisses privacy concerns over Aadhaar

BENGALURU: Union minister for law, justice, electronics and IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, threw his weight behind Aadhaar and dismissed privacy concerns raised by people on Sunday.The minister spoke at an event titled ‘Bengaluru, IT global hub: The road ahead’ on Sunday. He addressed techies on privacy concerns over Aadhaar, the city’s civic issues and the government’s push for digitisation. Mahadevpura constituency MLA Aravind Limbavali also attended the event.

 “Once a bank account is linked to Aadhaar, you can disown the account but not your Aadhaar-linked biometrics,” Prasad said.The minister said there was a lot of difference between the Aadhaar implementation by the BJP and the UPA governments, as the earlier system had no legal backing.
On the other hand, a law passed in Parliament pertaining to Aadhaar was in place, with a provision for privacy, he said.He further said he felt sorry for Bengalureans for the poor state of civic infrastructure.
He blamed it on the Congress government and questioned their commitment to the state.

‘VOTER Id WON’t BE LINKED’

When asked if the government will make it mandatory to link Voter IDs to Aadhaar cards, Prasad said he was not in favour of it as both IDs operated in different fields. “It will also give the opposition the ammunition to say how everything was linked to Aadhaar card.”