Agencies, New Delhi

The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed The Aadhaar and Other Laws Amendment Bill with the government asserting that the use of Aadhaar is vital but voluntary and no one would be denied their benefits of welfare schemes if some individuals did not have Aadhaar cards or cannot produce them.

Union Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the strict enforcement of Aadhaar card has saved state exchequer’s money and the government has made considerable saving in implementation of various welfare measures and schemes.

Through the Aadhaar, Mr Prasad said 4.23 crore fake LPG connections and 2.98 crore fake ration cards were removed, adding that Rs 7.48 lakh crore was transferred through Direct Bank Transfer.

Aadhaar norms have been framed with so much of precautions and safeguards that “even as Law and IT Minister if I seek to know details of one’s individual information as provided in Aadhaar, actions can be taken against me”.

“Nothing can pressurise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government except the pressure of the people of India,” he said in reference to opposition members insisting that the government has come under pressure from private players.

The Minister said it has been clarified more than once that no one would be denied their benefits of welfare schemes if some individuals did not have Aadhaar cards or the inability to produce them.”The echo system of Aadhaar is very clear about it…,” he said.

He made it clear that India is committed to ‘data sovereignty’.

The bill provides for the use of Aadhaar number as proof of identity of a person, subject to authentication.

The Bill does not discriminates on either caste or religion, Mr Prasad said.

The biometric and demographic information of an individual remain in encrypted form, so right to privacy of individual is not violated, he said.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah came in the mid-speech of the IT Minister.

Earlier, participating in the debate, Congress member Manish Tewari said that certain provisions of the bill go against the spirit of the Constitution and impinge on the rights of citizens.

He said it appears the intention of the Modi government was to reduce the individuals to numbers and cautioned that ‘when last time in history this was attempted, it had devastating consequences.

He said the UPA government in 2009 had listed 13 main objectives when it came up with notification on UID.

‘It is unfortunate that the government decided to pick only one of them which is defined as use and applicability of UID…in order to frame a legal architecture for a framework which had been in place,’ he said.

Mr Tewari said the intention of Aadhaar was to provide identity proof to individuals who did not have one. But in 2016, the Modi government insisted to make only Aadhaar as the identity proof to provide financial assistance to the beneficiaries of the welfare schemes.

The Bill replaces this provision to state that an individual may voluntarily use his Aadhaar number to establish his identity, by authentication or offline verification.

The Bill states that authentication of an individual’s identity via Aadhaar, for the provision of any service, may be made mandatory only by a law of Parliament. The Bill amends the Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 .

Earlier, Congress floor leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury moved the statutory resolution opposing the introduction of the Bill and also said the promulgation of the Ordinance in March, 2019 was unwarranted. He said, ‘For every 10 Bills, you ( the Law Minister) are bringing four Ordinances.

Taking dig at the Law Minister for saying that earlier Aadhaar was ‘Niradhar’, the Congress member said, ‘Aap Aadhaar humsay Udhar liye hain (“You have borrowed the Aadhaar from us”).

He also said the Modi government is taking credit of the Aadhaar which was initially mooted by the UPA regime.

Biju Janata Dal member Pinaki Misra said the Data Protection Bill should be brought in if full support to the Aadhaar Bill is to be extended. There should be a robust statutory data protection measure, he said, adding that ‘information and data was the new oil of the society’.

Among others who spoke were Supriya Sule of NCP, Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal, P Raveendranath Kumar of AIADMK, P P Choudhary of the BJP and AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi.

The Hyderabad Member said the government does not believe in the concept of ‘Jeeyo and Jeene do’.

Amendments made by opposition members were negated.

The Bill was passed with voice vote.

The House skipped lunch as the Aadhaar bill was taken up immediately after Zero Hour.