Aadhaar Bill Re-introduced In The Parliament

Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill 2019, has been re-introduced in the parliament by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The proposed amendments to Aadhaar Act 2016 will:
Provide for voluntary use of Aadhaar number in physical or electronic form by authentication or offline verification with the consent of Aadhaar number holder.
It will also pave the way for use of alternate virtual identity number to keep hidden the actual Aadhaar number of the person.
It seeks to allow entities to perform authentication only when they are compliant with the standards of privacy and security defined by the UIDAI.
The amendment will also prevent denial of services for refusing to, or being unable to, undergo authentication.
Give a child an option to exit from the biometric ID programme on attaining 18 years of age.
Impose stiff penalties for violation of norms set for the use of Aadhaar and violation of privacy. A civil penalty of up to Rs 1 crore on violation of provisions, and additional fine of up to Rs 10 lakh per day in case of regular non-compliance.
Unauthorised use of identity information by a requesting entity would be punishable with imprisonment of up to three years with a fine that may extend to Rs 10,000 or in case of a company with a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh.
Punishment for unauthorised access to the Central Identities Data Repository as well as data tampering is proposed to be extended to 10 years each from the current three years.
The proposed Bill will replace the ordinance already in place issued in March 2019.

Various oppositions have been raised to the provisions of the amendment act, which include:

The bill allows private companies to access data without laying safeguards for data protection as mandated by Supreme Court thus infringing the Right to Privacy of citizens.
The Data Protection Bill should be passed either simultaneously with the Bill or before the amendment bill is passed.
The amendment contravenes the Supreme Court’s judgement that restricted the use of Aadhaar for only such things which have the colour of a subsidy and which are paid out of the Consolidated Fund of India. The amendment allows Aadhaar to be used for verification, phone connections etc.