Targeted money transfers using Aadhaar: A way to steal elections

Frontline
Print Edition September 27, 2019
Anupam Saraph
The use of targeted money transfers using Aadhaar is a corrupt practice as defined under Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act. But just 90 days before the 2019 Lok Sabha election, at least 41 million voters received gifts and gratification through direct benefit transfer of at least Rs.623 billion through the PM-KISAN scheme.

Aleksandr Kogan, a professor of Cambridge University, sought consent from users to take a psychometric survey using his app, “This Is Your Digital Life”. The app required the users to log into their Facebook accounts. While profiling the user, the app also captured all the news feed, timeline, posts, messages, direct messages and data of the friends of the user. This data were passed on to Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who reportedly weaponised them in political campaigns in more than 200 elections across the world. In 2017, Cambridge Analytica was caught on camera confessing to the manipulation of elections in Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Brazil. Cambridge Analytica was also contracted by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election in the United States and by Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.

There was shock and outrage across the globe against Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. In elections where they were part of the campaign, they were accused of having manipulated the results by their use of blackmail, bribes, coercion or replacement.

Meanwhile, in India, in February 2012, the Nandan Nilekani-led Task Force on an Aadhaar-Enabled Unified Payment Infrastructure pushed for the use of Aadhaar numbers for direct benefit transfer (DBT) to target subsidies, benefits and services to beneficiaries. This called for the expansion of transfer of money, in place of subsidised goods and services, and the use of Aadhaar numbers as a financial address of the beneficiaries.

The use of the Aadhaar number as a financial address for money transfer not only replaced subsidised goods or services to beneficiaries, but it replaced money transfers to bank accounts of beneficiaries that used the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI ) National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT). Since then, 452 government schemes across 56 Ministries have been converted to DBT for targeted delivery of subsidies and benefits as money to bank accounts. In most of these schemes, Aadhaar numbers are used to transfer money to beneficiaries instead of their bank accounts even when the bank accounts were readily available.

The transfer of money to Aadhaar numbers, instead of the beneficiaries’ bank account numbers, requires the seeding of Aadhaar numbers to beneficiary lists. Since money must ultimately go to bank accounts, Aadhaar money transfers also require a separate mapping of the Aadhaar number to a bank account. This is maintained by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a non-governmental company that manages Aadhaar payments. This mapping is updated by the NPCI on the basis of Aadhaar numbers seeded to bank accounts by various member banks.

The Aadhaar numbers seeded to the beneficiary lists and bank accounts, therefore, decide the targeting of the subsidy or benefit to beneficiaries. Unlike a list of bank accounts of fixed beneficiaries, the list of beneficiaries now becomes a volatile one that is available for manipulation by seeding or deseeding Aadhaar numbers to beneficiary lists or bank accounts, every time, before making money transfers.

It is strange that this push to use Aadhaar for money transfers was made in the name of transparency as neither the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) nor the Ministry of Finance nor the RBI certifies the Aadhaar numbers as those belonging to beneficiaries or the accounts to which the money actually gets transferred as those with Aadhaar numbers of the list of beneficiaries. The Comptroller and Auditor General has never audited the need, or sanity, to use Aadhaar, which is an uncertified, unverified and unaudited number, to decide inclusion or exclusion from beneficiary lists. Neither has it verified whether those who actually received the money through Aadhaar numbers were those who qualified as beneficiaries. The use of Aadhaar for money transfers enabled an ecosystem of private players to take control of targeting money transfers.

Reference:- https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article29407446.ece

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