Government: No proposal to make Aadhaar mandatory

The NDA government will soon issue guidelines to all ministries, government departments and states clarifying that Aadhaar is not a mandatory requirement to avail of various services and is only one of the multiple valid government identification proofs.

On Thursday, the Cabinet Secretariat held a meeting of all concerned ministries where it was decided to issue a set of guidelines to this effect. This follows the Supreme Court’s move on Monday asking the Centre and all states to “adhere to” its earlier order that no person should be denied any benefits or “suffer” for the lack of an Aadhaar card.

The government further clarified the matter in Parliament. “There is no such proposal under consideration of the government at this stage,” Planning Minister Rao Inderjit Singh said in a written reply to Lok Sabha. “Various ministries, departments and agencies of Centre and states that implement different schemes involving provisions of benefits or services are encouraged to leverage Aadhaar for elimination of fakes and duplicates from the list of beneficiaries, increasing efficiency of implementation and achieving higher levels of transparency. In doing so, it has to be ensured that no eligible person suffers or is denied any benefit or service, merely for the lack of an Aadhaar,” Singh said. The government’s clarification is significant given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to the project, and the government’s move to link several key schemes to the UID number.

Source:: Indian Express