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Supreme Court rules against linking of Aadhaar with provident fund accounts

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 13:53:49 +0000

Decision comes after tech firms turn to govt for help after EPFO makes linking Aadhaar with individual PF accounts mandatory

Image Courtesy: business-standard.com

After the Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) made it made it mandatory to link the Aadhaar card with individual Provident Fund accounts, a bunch of technology and back office companies turned to the government for relief, The Economic Times reported.

The companies, seeking help on the clarification of norms, approached the labour minister Suresh Kumar in Bengaluru last week, saying that the company was struggling to implement the mandate.

An executive from tech major Hewlett Packard (HP) said, “Employees are claiming that they will not give Aadhaar number for EPF as per the Supreme Court order. The EPFO, on the other hand, wants us to collect the number,” said the executive at the meeting.”

“Many of our employees are citing the SC judgment that said any such linking is optional,” he added.

In September 2018, the Supreme Court had ruled that Aadhaar wasn’t mandatory for pension schemes. The SC bench while upholding the constitutionality of the Aadhaar Act, had then said that Aadhaar can’t be made mandatory for the delivery of many public services including pension.

Last month, the Bombay HC had granted ad interim relief from prosecution to JP Morgan Services India Private Limited, after a criminal complaint by the EPFO for not sharing the Aadhaar link and bank account details of their employees.

What EPFO says

The EPFO points to a notification by the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) allowing the use of Aadhaarbased authentication for employee provident funds accounts. Additional Central PF Commissioner Pankaj Raman of the Employee Provident Fund Office (EPFO) in New Delhi cited a November 2018 notice on the matter.

Inc42 reported, in March 2018, a data breach through Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) also came to light via a letter circulated on Twitter. The letter titled ‘Secret’, which was addressed to the CEO of Common Service Centre, claimed that hackers exploited vulnerabilities through a government’s online website built to link Aadhar with PF account to steal data. This data breach is expected to have discouraged the employees to provide Aadhaar details to EPFO.

The way forward

A software professional, Elisha Ebenezer is also challenging the notification which has mandated linking of Aadhaar to Universal Account Number (UAN) for availing pension and provident fund benefits in the Madras High Court. He further believes that EPFO’s notification is unconstitutional and against SC directives.

While employees from tech companies said that their companies were planning to take disciplinary action against them for not linking their Aadhaar numbers with their PF accounts, it has come forth that employers are unable to contribute to a PF account as the EPFO isn’t allowing the company from creating a PF account in the absence of Aadhaar.

While companies on their part are trying to ease out things for its employees, EPFO suggests that they would introduce a facility that will facilitate employees to create the universal account number (UAN) on their own and link it with the Aadhaar. “This will remove apprehensions among employees as they do not have to part with the Aadhaar number,” an EPFO official told ET.

The official, who did not want to be named, added that the EPFO does not keep a database of Aadhaar numbers but it is used only to authenticate the credentials of the employees on the UIDAI database.

In February this year, a five-judge constitution bench had held that while Aadhaar would remain mandatory for filing of I-T returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN), it would not be mandatory to link Aadhaar to bank accounts and telecom service providers cannot seek its linking for mobile connections.

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Linking aadhaar with election ID would disenfranchise elderly and manual labourers: ECI told

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 06:38:06 +0000

In a letter to the Election Commission of India (ECI), more than 200 prominent citizens have said that a petition Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay vs Union of India before the Delhi High Court seeking an e-voting system using fingerprint and face biometrics should be “dismissed”, as aadhaar linkage with the Election ID “would harm the right to vote that Indian citizens have under our democracy, flowing from the Constitution and the Representation of People’s Act, 1951.”

While the Delhi High Court has asked the ECI to “consider” the plea within eight weeks, the letter states, the Act considers universal adult suffrage to Indian citizens (including non-resident Indians (NRIs) still holding an Indian passport), and Section 9 of the aadhaar Act, 2016, does not constitute proof

The letter says, “Linking of aadhaar number with voter ID would effectively be an exercise involving significant public expense and yielding no benefit whatsoever in determining the genuineness of voters”, warning that the linking would “weaken and contaminate” the Indian electoral system, even as harming the functioning of India’s democracy, as there are many instances where aadhaar IDs had been found with non-nationals.

The letter asks the ECI to recall the “disastrous outcome” of a previous exercise of aadhaar-voter ID linking conducted as part of the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Program (NERPAP) in 2015, due to which at least 30 lakh voters disenfranchised. “As that exercise demonstrates, carrying out timely door-to-door verification of voters is as yet the most effective method of updating electoral rolls and ensuring accuracy of voter data,” insists the letter.

The signatories of the letter include Dalit rights leader Bezwada Wilson, politicians Brinda Karat and Yashwant Sinha, bureaucrat-turned-activist Harsh Mander, political scientist Jagdeep Chhokar, development economist Jean Dreze, actor Nandita Das, RTI activists Nikhil Dey and Venkatesh Nayak, ex-Gujarat DGP PGJ Nampoothiri, journalist P Sainath, farmers’ activist Sagar Rabari, human rights activist Shabnam Hashmi, film director Shyam Benegal, and social scientist Sukhadeo Thorat.

Text:

We are writing in reference to the Delhi High Court’s direction in Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay vs Union of India , wherein the petitioner “proposes an e-voting system using fingerprint and face biometric” and, for that purpose, linking of aadhaar number with voter ID, in response to which the Election Commission of India (ECI) is requested to consider the plea within 8 weeks.

We believe that such a consideration has much graver implications for our democracy as a whole, compelling us to share our grave concerns in this letter. At the outset, we remind the Hon’ble Commission that the Representation of People’s Act, 1951, currently limits universal adult suffrage to Indian citizens (including non-resident Indians (NRIs) still holding an Indian passport).

We would like to bring to the Hon’ble Commission’s attention that, per Section 9 of the aadhaar Act, 2016 , “the aadhaar number or authentication thereof” does not constitute proof of citizenship – the full section is quoted below: “9. The aadhaar number or the authentication thereof shall not, by itself, confer any right of, or be proof of citizenship or domicile in respect of an aadhaar number holder.”

Linking of aadhaar number with voter ID would effectively be an exercise involving significant public expense and yielding no benefit whatsoever in determining the genuineness of voters. On the contrary, many aadhaar IDs have been found with non-nationals. Taking into account the many cases of blatantly incorrect enrollments, leave aside fakes , linking aadhaar with the electoral roll would weaken and contaminate the Indian electoral system. It would undermine the integrity of the Indian election process and harm the functioning of democracy.

We also ask the Hon’ble Commission to recollect the disastrous outcome of the previous exercise of aadhaar-voter ID linking conducted as part of the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Program (NERPAP) in 2015, due to which at least 30 lakh voters disenfranchised. As that exercise demonstrates, carrying out timely door-to-door verification of voters is as yet the most effective method of updating electoral rolls and ensuring accuracy of voter data.

Specifically addressing the bogey that “e-voting system using fingerprint and face biometric” can “prevent bogus or fabricated voting”, we would like to point out that not only does possessing an aadhaar number fail to qualify the number holder’s eligibility to vote, biometric-linked authentication would on the contrary disenfranchise many rightful voters, in particular the elderly, manual labourers, and those living in areas suffering a lack of electric power and/or network coverage.

Lastly, we draw your attention to the 2017-2018 State of Aadhaar Report , one of whose findings is that self-reported errors in aadhaar data were found to be one-and-one-half times higher than errors in the electoral database [Pg 10]. It would therefore be erroneous to conclude that linking aadhaar number to voter ID will help “purify” the electoral rolls in any manner.

Aadhaar linkage would harm the right to vote that Indian citizens have under our democracy, flowing from the Constitution and the Representation of People’s Act, 1951. We urge you to seek the dismissal of Upadhyay’s petition for the reasons listed above at the earliest, and not let the issue drag on any further.

Courtesy: Counter View

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