UIDAI dismisses reports about alleged theft of data of 7.82 crore Aadhaar holders

UIDAI said that it’s CIDR and servers are completely safe and fully secure and no illegal access was made and no data has been stolen from its servers.

New Delhi: Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Wednesday dismissed reports about the alleged theft of data of 7.82 crore Aadhaar holders in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The report about the alleged theft was published by several portals in connection with the news relating to the FIR filed against IT Grid (India) on the basis of a complaint by Telangana Police.

UIDAI in a statement said that it’s CIDR and servers are completely safe and fully secure and no illegal access was made and no data has been stolen from its servers.

Based on a complaint by officials of UIDAI, the Cyberabad Police had filed one more case against city-based IT Grids India Pvt Ltd for alleged unauthorised use of data of voters.

UIDAI clarified that service providers usually collect Aadhaar number, name, address, etc., directly from individuals for providing services. They are required under the Aadhaar Act and Information Technology Act to use these sensitive information only for the purpose for which such information has been collect

ed and are not allowed to share further without the consent of the Aadhaar holders, the statement read.

If they violate the provisions of Aadhaar Act in collection of Aadhaar numbers from people, their storage, usage, and sharing, they are liable to be prosecuted under the Aadhaar Act, it added.

UIDAI also said that through the FIR, the police has been requested by UIDAI to investigate as to for what purpose the Aadhaar numbers were collected from the people by IT Grid (India) and is stored and used by the company and whether any provisions of Aadhaar Act have been violated. The alleged incident has nothing to do with UIDAI’s data and servers.

The city police had earlier registered a case against IT Grids India for illegally using and storing information of crores of voters of Andhra Pradesh through "Seva Mitra" mobile application allegedly used by the ruling TDP in AP.

The Telangana government handed over the case to the SIT which seized hard disks belonging to IT Grids and sent them to Telangana State Forensic Science Laboratory (TSFSL) for forensic examination.

The TSFSL in its preliminary report has stated the seized hard disks contained a database of a large number of records pertaining to Aadhaar number in a particular structural database.

Based on the Telangana State Forensic Science Laboratory (TSFSL) report, UIDAI filed a complaint with police. Upon further examination of the digital evidence, it was found that 7,82,21,397 records of 

Aadhaar data belonging to people of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were used by IT Grids India for "Seva Mitra" application of the TDP, the UIDAI said in its complaint.

A senior official of UIDAI said some state government departments were permitted to use Aadhaar data for verification purpose.

"Storing Aadhaar data is a crime. Some mobile companies are also given permission to use Aadhaar data for verification. But they cannot store data and they cannot deviate from the assigned purpose," the official said, news agency PTI reported.

(With PTI reports)