Aadhaar: SBI alleges data misuse, UIDAI denies charges

Officials at State Bank of India (SBI) have alleged the misuse of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) data, according to media reports. Countering the charge, UIDAI said the Aadhaar data base is completely secured, and no breach has taken place.

SBI officials informed the UIDAI that the logins and biometrics of their operators have been misused to generate unauthorised Aadhaar cards.

SBI, like many other banks, was assigned an Aadhaar enrolment target. The bank had selected vendors in Chandigarh - FIA Technology Services and Sanjivini Consultants - to cover Punajb, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Chandigarh.

Half of the 250 employees working in these agencies have been penalised in the last two months. As a result of either deactivation or blacklisting of these penalised employees, SBI was unable to meet its target and was penalised for the same.

Media reports say that one of the operators penalised includes 40-year-old Vikram. Vikram had allegedly used fake documents to generate Aadhaar cards. He used 143 devices - laptops, desktops and tablets, to generate multiple station IDs under his name, between November 9 and 17. Being a registrar, SBI had the approval to appoint multiple station IDs, but the bank did not do so.

This came into light when SBI Chandigarh officials raised the issue to the corporate office in Mumbai, claiming that someone had hacked into their system to generate multiple station IDs.

Vikram, who earns a monthly salary of Rs 10,000, was fined more than Rs 33 lakh. According to media reports, B Rajendra Kumar, Deputy General Manager of SBI said:

"We have, through our corporate office in Mumbai, raised this issue with the UIDAI. The authority should be more transparent with us and let us know how this is happening. They should also guide us on the issue and, above all, make their database more secure."

SBI had earlier done an internal investigation against Vikram, who was given a clean chit and was been requested to be sent back to work.

Also Read: Big brother Aadhaar is no longer watching: what this means for you

In September last year, the Supreme Court of India, while upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, had struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which allowed the sharing of citizen data with private entities.