AADHAAR: FIRMS UNSURE ON DELINKING

A day after the Supreme Court struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act that allowed sharing of Aadhaar data with private entities, companies don’t have clarity on what the ruling means for their business.

Hindustan Times contacted over a dozen companies in the telecom, banking and finance sector. Many are waiting for a notification from their respective regulatory authorities; few say the judgement doesn’t affect them. There is a disagreement even in the legal community on the interpretation of this specific section of the verdict. Some argue it is now impossible for private companies to use Aadhaar data at all; others say Aadhaar can be used as long alternatives are made available to customers.

WHAT IS DATA USED FOR

Aadhaar data is primarily used for e-KYC purposes. eKYC is a paperless Aadhaar-based process used to ease the customer identification process and get details such as name, address, date of birth, sex and photograph. eKYC, companies say, speeds up the process and reduces the KYC cost for the company. Following the verdict, two big questions loom for the private sector. First, will the companies be required to delete existing Aadhaar-related data? Second, can the firms make use of Aadhaar e-KYC services going forward?

DELETION OF DATA

Individual customers always had the option to get their data deleted—even before the judgement. UIDAI guidelines say that an Aadhaar number holder can revoke consent given to any entity “for storing his e-KYC data or for sharing it with third parties” and upon such revocation, the entity “shall delete the e-KYC data and cease any further sharing”. Nafees Ahmad, Chief Information Officer of Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, said the company will delete Aadhaarrelated data if customers provide with alternative KYC related documents. Ashish Gupta, Chief Technology Officer of PolicyBazaar, an insurance web aggregator, also said customer data will be erased if requested. “The judgement doesn’t change anything for us,” Gupta said, as the company never made Aadhaar e-KYC a compulsory requirement. But companies are not sure if the verdict will require them to delete customer data en masse — as Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told HT in an interview.

CAN PHONE NUMBERS BE DELINKED?

All of India’s three top telecom companies — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-IDEA and Reliance Jio — directed HT’s questions to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), an industry association of mobile service providers, saying this is an industry issue. “The association [COAI] is awaiting clarity on some of these questions from the DoT [Department of Telecommunications],” Ranjan Matthews, DG of COAI said. “Any UIDAI circular or anything else has to be routed through the DoT for instructions to us,” he said.