Aadhaar Bill turns hot potato

Finance, IT departments bounce Bill back to each other

The finance and information technology departments are locked in a dispute over who should draft the state Aadhaar bill.

The Centre enacted the Aadhaar legislation which makes it mandatory for beneficiaries to link their Aadhaar number to the Centrally funded welfare schemes they avail of.

The Centre directed all state governments to bring similar laws to make mandatory to linking the Aadhaar number of beneficiaries with state welfare schemes.

The finance department asked the IT department to prepare the Bill. The IT department replied that it would only help in developing projects as desired by government departments. The drafting of the Aadhaar Bill should be done by the finance department, it said.

The finance department sent back the file saying that the linking of beneficiaries with Aadhaar came under the ambit of information technology activity.

The IT department again replied that it was restricted to preparing information technology products for government departs and sent the file back a second time.

The government wants the draft Bill to be prepared to present in the Assembly.

A finance department has said that the state government need not bring in a fresh legislation to link the Aadhaar number and the Central Act would serve the purpose.

The official said that The Central Aadhaar Act gives state governments the option to enact their own law or issue a notification to adopt the Central law.

The deadline set by the Centre for the purpose is December 31.

The Centre has said that if the state governments have not linked Aadhaar details with beneficiaries of Central government schemes, it will stop releasing the funds for those schemes.

The direction to state governments to link the beneficiaries’ Aadhaar details with state schemes flows from this.

The finance department says linking of Aadhaar with welfare schemes is IT activity. The IT department says it only develops tech solutions to departments.