SBI Alleges Aadhaar Data Misuse, UIDAI Refutes Claims

The UIDAI said that the Aadhaar database was fully secured and no data breach had taken place.

Aadhaar cards. Image used for representation.

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/@AlankitGroup)

Officials of the State Bank of India have alleged the misuse of Aadhaar data, detailing that the logins and biometrics of their Aadhaar operators have been misused, in an attempt to generate unauthorised Aadhaar cards, a Times of India exclusive report has found.

Responding to the allegations, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the authority which established the database, refuted the claims and said: "Aadhaar database is fully secured and no security breach, biometric or otherwise, has taken place,” the report added.

The matter came to notice after SBI, which was given an Aadhaar enrolment target for Chandigarh region for which it had hired vendors - FIA Technology Services Pvt Ltd and Sanjivini Consultants, found that nearly half of their operators associated with these agencies were penalised- to the effect of being deactivated or blacklisted- only in the past two months.

As a result of this, there was a reported halt of Aadhaar enrollment programme at many of the bank’s branches, the TOI report added.

UIDAI Justifies Operator Penalisation

The UIDAI in its statement had defended its decision to penalize several of the operators associated with the agencies, the report stated.

It referred to a 40-year-old Aadhaar operator named Vikram, who worked at the SBI branch in Uchana in Haryana. The UIDAI claimed that Vikram had used his operator ID to generate unauthorized Aadhaar cards by using fraudulent documents and “multiple station IDs”, between 9 and 17 November, 2018. Devices such as laptops and desktops are usually used for Aadhaar enrollment and are registered with UIDAI, thus leading them to be identified by the "station ID", the report added.

The unauthorized Aadhaar cards were thus made from 143 different devices.

SBI Refutes UIDAI’s Allegations

Refuting the UIDAI’s claims, however, officials belonging to SBI’s Chandigarh branch reached out to its Mumbai counter part, asking them to bring up the issue with the UIDAI as they claimed that they had not created multiple station IDs. They also suggested that there was indeed a loophole in the security system that the UIDAI was boasting of- which allowed "someone to hack the system and generate multiple station IDs" in Vikram's name, The Times of India report claimed.

Meanwhile, the bank has given a clean chit to Vikram, despite UIDAI’s allegations. The bank also asked the UIDAI to remove the penalty against Vikram, so that he could return to work, the report added.

Speaking to the newspaper, SBI Deputy General Manager B Rajendra Kumar said:

“We have, through our corporate office in Mumbai, raised this issue with 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.”

(With inputs from The Times of India)