The government of India tabled the new Aadhaar amendment bill in the Lok Sabha. The new bill intends to bring a lot of new changes to the way Aadhaar is used in institutions across the country. Apart from all the changes in various use cases, the major change that Indian citizens will witness with Aadhaar is that it can’t be mandatory anymore for services.
The bill was tabled by the Union Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the Lok Sabha. The new amendment will replace the ordinance that was issued earlier in March and mostly tries to make Aadhaar safer and ensure citizen’s data privacy stays intact. The major change that this bill will introduce is that Aadhaar won’t be mandatory anymore for verification purposes. And those violating the law will be penalised heavily.
If you want to catch up on all that the new amendment introduces to the table, here’s a brief of all the major pointers.
What changes in Aadhaar
–The biggest change to Aadhaar is that it’s now voluntary instead of being mandatory. If you are taking a new mobile phone connection or opening a bank account, you won’t be mandated to present your Aadhaar details for verification. However, if you voluntarily want to present your Aadhaar data, you can do so without any issue.
–In case any third-party is found violating the regulation, the government will impose heavy fines on the defaulter. The bill includes a civil penalty of Rs 1 crore as well as Rs 10 lakhs per day if it isn’t corrected.
–The bill also wants to give children turning 18 years an option to be part of the biometric ID programme. Therefore, young adults won’t be forced to make Aadhaar unless they voluntarily want to.
–For enhancing the privacy of an individual’s Aadhaar number, the bill proposes to introduce a virtual number for identification. This is similar to how many payment portals carry on their verification bit without exposing the user’s data to risk – sort of like an OTP. Therefore, Aadhaar will generate a virtual number during a verification process.
–The new bill also wants to establish the Unique Identification Authority of India Fund and demands powers to regulate like UIDAI.
–The new bill also wants to ensure that citizens cannot be denied any service if he/she doesn’t want to undergo Aadhaar authentication.
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