Personal information of more than a million citizens is now public after the website maintained by the Jharkhand Directorate of Social Security was hit by a programming error.
According to a report by Hindustan Times, the leaked information mostly contains the names, address and bank account details of senior citizens who are beneficiaries of Jharkhand’s old age pension scheme.
Currently, Jharkhand has over 1.6 million pensioners, 1.4 million of whom have seeded their bank accounts with their Aadhaar numbers to avail of direct bank transfers for their monthly pensions, the report adds.
This has come at a time when the Supreme Court of India has questioned the Centre over making Aadhaar card mandatory for availing benefit schemes.
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The apex court had on March 27 made it clear that Aadhaar cards cannot be made mandatory by the government for extending benefits of social welfare schemes.
Almost a month back, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had blacklisted an entity for 10 years for sharing Aadhaar details of cricketer M. S. Dhoni.
The UIDAI had also ordered an inquiry to determine any possible involvement of others and take action as per the Aadhaar Act. “We have blacklisted VLE (Village Level Entrepreneur) who enrolled M.S. Dhoni for leaking Aadhaar receipt which carried his personal information.
At UIDAI, we are very strict on the privacy issue. We have ordered further inquiry on the matter and action will be taken against all those involved in the leak,” UIDAI chief executive officer Ajay Bhushan Pandey told PTI.
