Central Information Commissioner questions Aadhaar’s authenticity

Hyderabad: Central Information Commissioner Madabhushi Sridhar Acharyulu said ‘one can opt out of the provisions of marriage but not out of the Aadhaar,’ while replying to a question on making Aadhaar mandatory by the government during a talk in the Hyderabad Literary Festival.

The Chief Information Commissioner was delivering a talk on ‘Scrolls, Trolls, and Polls: Information and Democracy in India’, in the Hyderabad Literary Festival at Hyderabad Public School at Begumpet on Sunday. Sridhar Acharyulu said as far as the Aadhaar was concerned, he had no choice of opting out. Everywhere Aadhaar was made mandatory and there was no situation where one could opt out of Aadhaar.

He said the Aadhaar Act had come without Privacy Act. For every other grievance, the citizens would have to approach the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India), which would decide whether the allegations were correct or not. “Aadhaar is not considered for religion certificate, nor is it for the caste. It doesn’t prove your nativity. When there is no authenticity, how can we use this,” questioned Sridhar Acharyulu.

Replying to another question, the CIC said the media cannot be regulated. “You can file defamation if something is written against law, you can file defamation case, but you cannot regulate media. You cannot impose restriction on the content,” said Sridhar Acharyulu.

On the Facebook postings, Sridhar Acharyulu said the State governments had power with some or the other section to take action against the citizens if they did not like the comments. He recalled that two youths were booked for writing against the Shiv Sena. He stressed on the need for self-control and self-regulation.

The CIC stressed on the need to curb the monopoly of the media. He said the media should not have monopoly. He also said when an incident happened, the media started prosecution, which was not good. He said that in today’s era, even the media news was not authentic and added that people should verify the news for themselves. Chartered Accountant and ASM Technologies chairman M R Vikram moderated the talk.