COUNCIL MOOTED FOR WORKS IN AREA INSIDE ORR
Saying use of the technology was illegal, Internet Freedom Foundation asks if it will be used again
The state government is contemplating a Greater Hyderabad Regional Council (GHRC) comprising eight municipal corporations and seven municipalities within the outer ring road (ORR). Police, electricity department, Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board and other departments will function under the proposed council. It will take up major infrastructure projects while maintenance and operations will be taken up by the local bodies. The council will spend city agglomeration funds.
According to sources in the municipal administration and urban development department, the council will cover all districts of the region but its regulatory power and funding abilities would be restricted to matters like public transport, environmental protection and regional parks.
The municipal bodies will take care of maintenance of roads, sanitation, collection of property taxes, the water supply and sewerage network.
Telangana State Election Commission (SEC), in a reply to an RTI query, defended its recent use of facial recognition technology for voter identification by claiming that the provisions in the constitution allowed it to do so.
The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), an advocacy group, which had filed the query remains unconvinced and said the use of the technology was illegal.
It may be recalled that SEC had deployed facial recognition software in Kompally municipality during urban local body polls in January.
Voters in 10 polling booths were authenticated using mobile phones loaded with the necessary software, which was provided by the Telangana State Technology Services (TSTS). The move was controversial.
Famously, AIMIM chief, Asaduddin Owaisi, criticised SEC, calling the use of this technology a violation of the fundamental right to privacy. In the RTI query, IFF had asked what specific law permitted SEC to use facial recognition technology.
The reply read: “Article 243-ZA of the constitution of India provides powers to conduct elections to municipalities with free and fair manner (sic).” Sidharth Deb, parliamentary and policy counsel at IFF, said this wasn’t a valid justification. He pointed out that there was no law that governed the use of such technologies in a way that respects people’s right to privacy, has a specific purpose and has procedural safeguards to limit abuse by the state. “An article of the constitution is not the right lawful basis. So clearly, this is an illegal deployment of the technology,” he added.
IFF also asked SEC to furnish the data of how accurate the technology was while identifying voters. On an average, according to SEC’s reply, only 78 per cent of the voters were able to be identified correctly. Lighting and network issues at some booths and unclear photographs in EPIC cards were blamed for the low accuracy. Deb said, “The real issue with these issues is that oftentimes, the outcomes put at disadvantage minorities and at-risk groups.”
Also, interestingly, the deployment of the technology cost the TSEC `1,02,000 for mobile sets,
SIM cards and data cards.
It may be noted that the TSTS, a specialised agency established by the state government’s information technology department, provided the infrastructural support to SEC on this project.
The TSTS had submitted an undertaking that it would delete the data of voters, if any, stored in its servers after the polling process. However, as Deccan Chronicle had reported in the past, there is no mechanism for the public to verify this.
A senior official from TSTS had noted that only limited fields of voter data would be shared with TSTS. The official had said the certification of deletion would be self-declared by TSTS, without any external audit.
Deb noted that the lack of transparency on the deletion of data was a major red flag. Interestingly, in another RTI query, IFF asked if SEC had plans to use facial recognition technology in the future.