SC order on Aadhaar may affect DBT schemes

Aimed at changing the way government spends money for the betterment of the people, Aadhaar would have reduced social sector spending by one-fourth, said a 2010 Planning Commission study.

Updated on: Sep 24, 2013, 01:54:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The biometric-based Unique Identification or Aadhaar number for every resident above five years of age was one of the most ambitious programmes by the central government.

Aimed at changing the way government spends money for the betterment of the people, Aadhaar would have reduced social sector spending by one-fourth, said a 2010 Planning Commission study.

However, hasty implementation of the programme led to a public interest litigation being filed in the Supreme Court.

One issue was how the government allowed private individuals to collect demographic details of residents without a law on data protection and privacy. Providing an identity and residence validity to illegal migrants remained controversial with the BJP opposing the scheme’s universal ambit.

A Parliamentary committee headed by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha junked a draft UIDAI law, accusing the Centre of pushing the scheme through the back door. A new draft UIDAI law has not been firmed up so far.

SC’s observation that government services cannot be denied to anyone not having an Aadhaar deals a final blow to the target of enrolling 1.1 billion residents by 2014. Aadhaar numbers have been issued to 410 million people.

The order can slow down UPA’s game changer direct benefit transfer (DBT) of entitlements as it can’t push people to enroll anymore. The government ensured enrollment by making Aadhaar mandatory to avail social security pension and scholarships.

Cooking gas subscribers in around 289 districts were to get subsidy directly into their Aadhaar linked bank accounts by early 2014. Many states like Delhi, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh made Aadhaar mandatory for services like registration of property and obtaining birth and caste certificates.

These measures were adopted to make the voluntary Aadhaar mandatory. That may not happen if the court’s order prevails.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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