'From Aadhaar details to get on Shramik trains, to filthy quarantine centres and police beatings; the journey home is stripping workers of rights and dignity... After being stranded since March—walking back home on foot, peddling their bicycles, hiding in trucks—migrant workers have finally been given a dignified option to travel back home. On 1 May, International Labour Day, the Indian Railways started running “Shramik Special” trains to move them to their home states.
'Officials with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) have suggested that camera networks performing facial recognition and temperature checks in public places could be a game-changer for the country’s coronavirus containment efforts, Outlook India reports, though experts suggest such a system would need to be carefully considered to avoid excessive surveillance or violations of privacy. The UIDAI currently holds images and contact details for 1.23 billion people, according to the report.
'The Telangana state government offered to help the Modi government build an intrusive, searchable system to build and track 360-degree profiles of India’s 1.2 billion residents without having to rely on Aadhaar, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish.
'The Narendra Modi government is in the final stages of creating an all-encompassing, auto-updating, searchable database to track every aspect of the lives of each of India’s over 1.2 billion residents, previously undisclosed government documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish. If the plans of Modi’s bureaucrats and advisors are realised, this system will automatically track when a citizen moves between cities, changes jobs, buys new property, when a member of a family is born, dies or gets married and moves to their spouse’s home.
'One in three Aadhaar-based payments for the Centre’s maternity benefit scheme, or Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), was credited to a wrong bank account, according to a progress report on Poshan Abhiyaan (Nutrition Mission) released by the NITI Aayog on Saturday. “A substantial number of payments (28% of all Aadhaar-based payments, of 31.29 lakh) are going to different bank accounts than what had been provided by the beneficiaries. Sometimes these are even untraceable by beneficiaries and field functionaries.
'“Where are you from? Show me your Aadhaar card… Call the police,” an auto rickshaw driver can be heard bellowing out the order to a man, who was later identified as a 25-year-old migrant labourer from West Bengal. Even as the migrant labourer yells back saying, "You want my ID card?" in Malayalam accent and is searching his wallet, the auto driver slaps him across the face...'
'Almost 90% of the ration cards that the Jharkhand government declared invalid between 2016 and 2018 belonged to real households, a study by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab revealed on Thursday. Almost 56% of these deleted ration cards were not linked with Aadhaar. The study comes at a time when the Jharkhand government is reportedly preparing for another round of mass deletion of ration cards. According to some estimates, 23 deaths due to starvation and non-availability of subsidised food grains were reported in Jharkhand between 2015 and 2019.
'More than a 100 people in a Hyderabad neighbourhood have been asked by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to verify their Aadhaar enrolment documents in person or face a suspension or cancellation of their 12-digit identity number that underpins access to government subsidies. The matter first came to light when a letter sent to 40-year-old autorickshaw driver Mohd Sattar Khan was widely shared on social media websites.
'Over 120 people in Hyderabad have received notices from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), asking them to prove that they are not illegal immigrants and have obtained their Aadhaar numbers through legitimate documents. Although the UIDAI has insisted in a separate statement that notices “have nothing to do with citizenship”, two examples that have entered the public domain appear to ask the person in question to “prove all your claims of citizenship”.
'The UIDAI on February 3 sent a letter to Sattar Khan, a resident of Hyderabad raising questions on whether he was an Indian citizen. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) that oversees the functioning of Aadhaar in the country in a letter to Sattar claimed to have had received a complaint/allegation that he was not an Indian National, the letter did not specify who made the complaint. UIDAI alleged that according to the complaint Sattar had obtained the Aadhaar card through false pretences, making false claims and submitting false documents...
