The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has completely refuted Moody's allegations that the Aadhaar system often denies service, especially to workers in hot and humid climates.
New Delhi: The central government has given its response to the claims made by global credit agency Moody's regarding Aadhaar Card. Recently, Moody's Investors Service had released a report. In which questions were raised on the credibility of Aadhaar Card. Global credit agency Moody's had said that Aadhaar poses privacy and security risks. At the same time, linking Aadhaar to the weather of India, Moody's had said that the weather here is very humid. The use of biometric technology is unreliable in such weather.
Centre calls Moody's claims baseless and lacks evidence
The Centre on Monday termed Moody's claims as baseless and lacking evidence. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) completely refuted Moody's allegations that the Aadhaar system often denies service to workers, especially in hot and humid climates.
Many countries approached UIDAI for a common digital ID system
The government said in a statement, "An investor service has made several claims against Aadhaar, the world's most trusted digital ID, without citing any evidence or evidence. Over the last decade, over a billion Indians have put their trust in Aadhaar by using it over 100 billion times to authenticate themselves."
IMF and World Bank praised Aadhaar
The statement said that global bodies like the IMF and the World Bank have praised Aadhaar. Many countries have approached UIDAI to understand how to implement a similar digital ID system. On the contrary, Moody's has warned in its report that a centralized system with simultaneous control over users' identity details and online resource access poses privacy and security risks to users.
The report does not cite primary-secondary data or research
“The claims made in this report do not cite any primary or secondary data or research. Investors Service did not make any effort to ascertain the facts regarding the issues raised regarding UIDAI. The government said that Moody's report failed to mention that biometric submission can also be done through contactless methods such as face authentication and iris authentication.”
Apart from this, the option of mobile OTP is also available in many use cases. The report also states that the centralized Aadhaar system has vulnerabilities regarding privacy and security. The factual position has been repeatedly disclosed in response to questions in Parliament in this regard. In which Parliament has been clearly informed that no breach has been reported from the Aadhaar database so far.
Workers do not need biometric authentication
The government stressed that workers are not required to provide biometric authentication to add their Aadhaar numbers to the MGNREGS database, nor are they required to receive payments under the scheme. The G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) document prepared by the World Bank during the G20 summit held in New Delhi earlier this month praised the spectacular transformation of the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in India over the last decade by Modi's government.
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