'Sweeping assertions with no evidence': Govt dismisses Moody’s critical report on Aadhaar

The government, in a statement late night on Monday, dismissed a report published by Moody’s Investor Service, that called the Aadhaar system unreliable due to the country’s hot and humid climate. The Ministry of Electronics & IT, in response to the report, stated that the investor service made “sweeping assertions against Aadhaar” without citing any evidence or basis. The ministry called Aadhaar the “most trusted digital ID in the world”.

Over 1 billion Indians expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves over 100 billion times, the government stated. “To ignore such an unprecedented vote of confidence in an identity system is to imply that the users do not understand what is in their own interest,” said the ministry, adding that the report does not cite primary or secondary data or research in support of its opinions.

The report quoted the wrong number of Aadhaars issued as 1.2 billion, “although the website prominently gives the updated numbers”, the statement added. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) quotes the number of Aadhaars generated as 1.38 billion.

The government stated that the investor service did not make any attempt to ascertain facts regarding the issues it raised from the authority. The report, it added, makes an “obvious reference to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)” when it speaks about service denials for manual labourers through biometric technologies.

“However, it is evident that the authors of the report are unaware that the seeding of Aadhaar in the MGNREGS database has been done without requiring the worker to authenticate using their biometrics, and that even payment to workers under the scheme is made by directly crediting money in their account and does not require the worker to authenticate using their biometrics.  The report ignores that biometric submission is also possible through contactless means like face authentication and iris authentication. In addition, the option of mobile OTP is also available in many use cases,” it said.

The ministry also said that the security and privacy vulnerabilities referred to by the report has been “repeatedly disclosed in response to Parliament questions, where Parliament has been categorically informed that till date no breach has been reported from Aadhaar database”.

The government said that apart from a billion-plus Indians who use Aadhaar, international agencies such as IMF and World Bank have also lauded the role of Aadhaar. Several nations have also engaged with UIDAI to understand how to deploy similar ID systems, the government added.

The G20 New Delhi Declaration has welcomed the framework for Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) systems and Aadhaar is the foundational DPI of India stack, it added.

The ministry’s response comes after Moody’s said that the Aadhaar system faces hurdles “including the burden of establishing authorisation and concerns about biometric reliability”. “The system often results in service denials, and the reliability of biometric technologies, especially for manual labourers in hot, humid climates, is questionable,” Moody’s stated in its report.

Also read: e-PAN Card: Here's how to generate instant PAN using Aadhaar Number; Check step-by-step guide