Last day to link Aadhaar with PAN. Should you panic?
It’s June 30 and for many, it’s the last day when Aadhaar wouldn’t be dictating too many aspects of everyday life of Indian citizens. Even though a recent order by the Supreme Court said that those without Aadhaar needn’t link the 12-digit biometric identity number to their PANs, or Permanent Account Number, in order to file tax returns, the top nevertheless upheld the validity of Section 139A of the Income Tax Amendment Act 2016, which made the Aadhaar-PAN link compulsory.
However, over 90 per cent of the PAN cards have yet to be been linked to their corresponding Aadhaar according to recent estimates, and this has prompted a last-minute clarification from the government saying that PAN cards will not become invalidated in case they are not linked with Aadhaar.
This means that while linking PAN to Aadhaar is a must as per government rulings, there’s an utter confusion regarding its voluntary-yet-mandatory nature, which the SC has not helped in settling. Moreover, while there are over 250 million PAN cards, so far only 2.6 crore Aadhhar numbers have been linked to PAN numbers, leaving a humungous gap in the implementation of the government rule.
In case, PAN and Aadhaar are not connected after July 1, 2017, it will be near impossible to file income tax returns. However, with the government having notified that Aadhaar will be connected with bank accounts by December 31, 2017, and given that the Supreme Court will hear about the privacy issue later this year, it seems that the state of confusion is here to stay until the end of this year.
Coercion by government
Even within the scope of the Aadhaar Act, it’s a voluntary proof of identity, and nothing more. However, the forced linking of Aadhaar with most of the welfare schemes has resulted in major exclusions and stunting of the programmes themselves.
The Aadhaar failures, in terms of identity mismatch, the inability of the biometric identification machines to cope with the digital authentication requests at a time when India is hardly ready to deal with such staggering levels of digital traffic, have resulted in the most vulnerable being made to feel the brunt of the Aadhaar drive.
Connecting Aadhaar to mid-day meal schemes and allowing children to go hungry, linking it to PDS for basic rations, staple food items, skills training and jobs, healthcare access such as cash benefits for TB patients, and for many more – has resulted in acute shortfalls in welfare outreach. Stories of woes and hardships are doing the rounds from different parts of the country.
Now, the forceful and patently illegal connection of UID to bank accounts would mean that citizens wouldn’t be left with any financial security as any problems with Aadhaar could lead to its deactivation or temporary suspension, thus cutting off access to every service related to it, including one’s bank accounts. The government’s logic is that almost 99 per cent of Indians have already obtained Aadhaar, and it’s too big an enterprise now to be curtailed or see partial rollbacks.
However, what the government doesn’t mention is that about 99.97 per cent of those who have Aadhaar already had an identity document, and only 0.03 per cent got an Aadhaar without showing two existing proofs of identity and address.
Why Aadhaar imperils democracy
The coercive nature of Aadhaar rulings force citizens into being surveyed at all times and be at the mercy of the Big State. Not only that, the acute security breaches that have been reported make Aadhaar a highly unreliable central authentication system and database, which exposes the financial and confidential details of citizens to cyber attacks and corporate fraudulence.
Already, reports of private entities being sold Aadhaar data have alerted us to the near future possibility of our data security being severely compromised. Citizens-driven initiatives such as Rethink Aadhaar have drawn attention to how the government and the UIDAI (Unique Identity Authority of India) have tried their best to paint a picture of Aadhaar which involves surrendering our rights to privacy and freedom in exchange for welfare services, but Aadhaar basically threatens both.
Inflated figures of Aadhaar benefits
Not only does Aadhaar not guarantee any benefits, either through 100 days of work via MGNREGA, widow or old age pension, or ration and food-grains, or LPG and kerosene, it, in fact, creates hurdles and exclusions by sending back those whose Aadhaar authentication fail for no fault of their own.
There have been more cases of fake Aadhaar than there have been cases of fake PAN cards, yet the logic that the government offered was that Aadhaar is here to remove duplication of identity and thereby prevent abuse of welfare schemes. In fact, it’s easier to abuse and hack into systems via Aadhaar than it is via PAN.
Moreover, detailed reports in websites such as Medianama have documented how Aadhaar authorities, including the architect of UIDAI, Nandan Nilekani, inflate savings claims by saying that Aadhaar has helped plug leakages in welfare schemes such as LPG benefits, NREGA, etc. While the government claims that the savings via Aadhaar in case of NREGA has been to the tune of Rs 7,633 crores, whereas the Goi data crunching itself puts the number at no more than Rs 30.3 crore.
Similarly, in the case of LPG savings, the actual data crunching brings the figure down from Rs 26,408 crore (government claim) to a best case scenario of Rs 203.77 crores.
Much hinges on the judiciary
While the Supreme Court has not yet created a constitutional bench on the much significant issue of privacy vis-à-vis Aadhaar, it has nevertheless issued interim orders that allow a citizen to file tax returns in case s/he doesn’t have Aadhaar. However, by upholding Section 139AA, the court nevertheless has discriminated against those with Aadhaar, but who got Aadhaar under excruciating circumstances, minus adequate information about its draconian impact on life, privacy and welfare.
Though SC has said that welfare services cannot be denied for lack of Aadhaar, the burden of implementation is with a creaking bureaucracy that will only be emboldened via Aadhaar, causing tremendous exclusions to those most vulnerable and marginalised. As senior SC advocate Sanjay Hedge writes, it’s a “band-aid on a gaping wound”, and the judgement hardly protects those poor who have been forced to obtain Aadhaar for lack of an alternative, or pure misinformation.
When the right to their bodily integrity is compromised and fingerprints and iris scans become more important than feeding our children or giving healthcare to the ailing, we enter an era of terrifying authoritarianism. But will the citizens of India wake up to Aadhaar’s challenges and demand its rollback? Only time will tell. Time until December 31, 2017, of course.