ECI seeks info from Andhra IT dept on data theft case

HYDERABAD: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has sought information from the Andhra Pradesh Information Technology Department by forwarding the complaint filed regarding data theft allegations. Speaking to TOI on Thursday, Real-Time Governance Society Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Babu said: “IT secretary has asked us information following a complaint forwarded from ECI on the issue. We have given the information to the IT secretary and the same to be sent to ECI. We haven’t received any letter from UIDAI.”

Babu added that none of the beneficiary data or People’s Hub data is available on the internet and even on CM core dashboard only abstract figures were found.

“People’s Hub is an integrated database that was developed during door-to-door smart pulse survey in 2016 and is continuously updated. Even today 35,000 updations are done. It is like taking the census every day. People’s Hub has 1.43 crore households and 4.57 crore citizens data. The hub has 123 parameters like land details, Aadhaar number, property tax, education qualification, caste, religion and socio-economic data,” said Babu.

“We do not store voter information in People’s Hub. We did not take any photo during the pulse survey. Beneficiary photos in Peoples Hub are from original Aadhaar database. While collecting information E-KYC was done with the consent of the citizen. We have not struck any MOU with any private company on sharing of data,” he said.

Babu said that he did not know how the Seva Mitra app had gotten access to beneficiary data and added that only white-listed internet protocol (IP) addresses that are assigned to the 80 government departments have access to the People’s Hub Data.

“As the household data had not been uploaded for over 15 years, it had resulted in duplication and pilferage of benefits and the number of ration cards at one time were more than the state’s population. We felt there was a need for a household survey. Ration card data that was part of Aadhaar-enabled State Resident Data Hub was used as a base. The BC commission had also asked for socio-economic data and based on that mandate we have done this,” Babu said.

“We have created a virtual ID with household numbers. We are not maintaining the CM core dashboard and it contains only abstract figures like for instance for MNREGA works done. The main servers are based in Amaravati. We move them from Hyderabad to Amaravati,” he added.

Apart from Peoples Hub, there are several beneficiary databases like Web Land for the land database, ration cards and other several other departments. “The beneficiary details are available village-wise for various schemes in PDF printed format. This is an old practice of keeping the information in gram sabha. For extension officers, they can access to entire village or villages under his jurisdiction data but nobody can get entire state data,” Babu explained.

He added that People’s Hub has security features like encryption, firewall and white list IPs and continuous vulnerability assessment. “Because of People’s Hub, 29 lakh families which never had ration cards got them and 74 lakh fake beneficiary either dead or non-existent were removed,” Babu said.