Interactive Discussion on "Technology and Governance: Aadhaar Privacy Concerns and Database Security"



L to R: Mr Subhashish Bhadra, Adv Gautam Bhatia, Mr Ramesh  Chandran (GPPI-CPR), Adv Pavan Duggal            
Aadhaar has managed to remain in the news for a variety of reasons ever since its inception as a platform for efficient delivery of subsidy and benefit, eliminating leakages in the process. The pros and cons of Aadhaar continues to be debated with recent controversies on a number of fundamental issues related to privacy and political rights. Concerns related to matters of privacy, aggregation of data and its security, the commercial collection of data and its use and, more broadly, data used to restrict constitutional and other rights have managed to cause uproar across various sections. Against this backdrop, GPPI-CPR organised this roundtable discussion with the aim to create a focused discourse to help the Parliamentarians gain a well-rounded perspective on the risks and benefits of the platform.

Mr Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, and Cyber Law expert, through his presentation, explained the Cyber Law framework; Mr Gautam Bhatia, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, who is part of the team working on multiple challenges to the Aadhaar Act, focused on the Constitutional Law aspect; and Mr Subhashish Bhadra, Associate, Digital Identity, Omidyar Network, responsible for sourcing and evaluating Digital Identity grants and investments, deliberated upon the features of Aadhaar, the need for digital identity and Aadhaar’s approach to addressing the risks, etc.