Jharkhand was the first state to witness a series of such Aadhaar information leaks on government websites across India this week. It was also the gravest, considering that it made personal banking details and Aadhaar-related information of over 1.4 million pensioners available for days.
RANCHIUpdated: Apr 26, 2017 16:39 Ist
Hindustan Times, Ranchi |
Jharkhand was the first state to witness a series of such Aadhaar information leaks on government websites across India this week.(File Photo)
Renowned economist Jean Dreze on Wednesday said the Aadhaar information leak on a Jharkhand government’s website a few days ago was no temporary glitch, but the result of prolonged negligence on the part of the authorities concerned.
“It was a blatant case of negligence, not a temporary glitch,” said the economist, who is credited with conceptualising the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and working with Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on several developmental projects.
Jharkhand was the first state to witness a series of such Aadhaar information leaks on government websites across India this week. It was also the gravest, considering that it made personal banking details and Aadhaar-related information of over 1.4 million pensioners available on the public domain website for days.
Though the Jharkhand government claimed that the Aadhaar numbers and bank account numbers of government pensioners were displayed on the directorate of social security’s website for less than a week, Dreze’s associate Dheeraj Kumar – a right-to-food activist in Jharkhand – had found UID details of pensioners on the same virtual platform in the last week of March.
Economist Jean Dreze pointed out that the aggrieved pensioners were not even given the right to lodge a complaint against the breach. (Vipin Kumar/HT File Photo)
“I came across Aadhaar numbers and account numbers of pensioners during the course of my work last month. Back then, I did not realise this was an actual violation of the law,” Kumar said.
The state government has been denying the leak ever since it was fixed. Officials even told vernacular dailies on Tuesday that reports about the leak were false.
“We got to know about it this week. Our programmers are working on it, and the issue should be addressed very soon,” social welfare department secretary MS Bhatia had told HT on the day of the leak. The website was blocked within minutes.
Days after the Jharkhand breach, similar leaks were found on a public distribution system website in Chandigarh, the scholarship database in Uttar Pradesh, a pensioners’ dashboard in Kerala, and a Swacch Bharat Mission website maintained by the ministry of water and sanitation.