In Meghalaya, residents are joining a campaign to opt out of Aadhaar to protest its widening reach

More than a hundred people in Meghalaya have joined an initiative to opt out of Aadhaar, claiming they were coerced into getting the 12-digit biometrics-based unique identification number.

The campaign is led by the Meghalaya Peoples Committee on Aadhaar, an umbrella organisation of student and civil society groups. The organisers said the opt-out campaign was in response to the Union government’s persistent expansion of Aadhaar’s ambit in violation of Supreme Court directives. The unique number has been linked to various essential services such as accessing foodgrains under the Public Distribution System, the school mid-day meals programme and filing income tax returns, among others. This despite the Supreme Court, in several orders since 2013, emphasising that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory to avail of government welfare benefits.

The committee has also been working since 2014 to spread awareness on the alleged privacy concerns surrounding Aadhaar. Questions have been raised about the security of Aadhaar data in the wake of multiple leaks.

The organisers claimed that till Monday afternoon, more than 100 people had signed an opt-out letter drafted by the committee and addressed to the Unique Identification Authority of India, the government agency responsible for issuing Aadhaar numbers. They added that many more had shown an interest in the initiative.

The letter

“I ask that my demographic, biometric, authentication records and any other information about me which is with the UIDAI [Unique Identification Authority of India] be deleted from the UIDAI data base,” reads the letter . “Kindly delete all the information from the UIDAI data base and communicate to me when this exercise is complete.”

The letter goes on to say:

“I did not enroll on the UIDAI data base voluntarily; I was coerced/misled into enrolling because I was warned that I would lose my rights as a citizen, and that i would be excluded from my rights and entitlements and from various services that the state is obliged to provide to me unless I enrolled on the data base. I have since been apprised of the various concerns about the databasing of people. I am aware too that the coercion has been in deliberate contempt of the orders of the Supreme Court of India. 

“I did not consent to have my data shared with any service provider or any other third party. If it is so recorded in the UIDAI data base, I make it clear that by this letter I withdraw any consent that you may have recorded on your data base. All transactions which have been carried out on the basis of such consent may kindly be communicated to me; and also such actions reversed, by informing the third party of the withdrawal of consent.”

The opt-out campaign was concieved at a public meeting on October 24, according to Reverend Kyrsoibor Pyrtuh of the Meghalaya Peoples Committee on Aadhaar. “More than a thousand people had turned up for the meeting,” said the pastor and member of the Presbyterian church.

He added, “People of late have been flooded with messages and calls by banks and other private service providers to link their Aadhaar cards in violation of a Supreme Court order. So, we drafted a letter both in Khasi and English, which people could read, understand, and then give their informed consent to if they wanted to opt out.”

He said the letter was distributed among the people that day.

A religious angle?

On Monday, more than 100 people turned up at the Khasi Students’ Union office in Shillong to submit their signed opt-out letters, said Pyrtuh. He added that the number was likely to go up. “We have been receiving calls from people across the state,” he claimed. “Just as we speak, people have come all the way from Tura in the Garo hills. We are discussing how we can take the campaign to other parts of the state apart from the Khasi hills.”

Pyrtuh said misgivings about Aadhaar in Meghalaya emanate from privacy concerns, just like in the rest of the country. But he added that there was also a “religious angle”. He explained, “Meghalaya is pre-dominantly a Christian state, and there is a belief in the prophecy in the Bible that there will come a time where people will be marked with a number on their forehead, and without that your existence would be invalid.” He went on to say that privacy “also encompassed belief after all”.

‘Aadhaar helps illegal migrants’

But the Khasi Students’ Union, a constituent of the Meghalaya Peoples Committee on Aadhaar, is opposed to the identity number for a different reason. The organisation – which was one of the first to raise a red flag against Aadhaar in the state – claims that “anyone can get an Aadhaar, whether or not they are citizens of India”.

The student union’s general secretary, Donald V Thabah, pointed out, “Meghalaya has a huge problem of silent influx. People from Bangladesh and Nepal enter through Assam and come here, which has changed the demography here.” Thabah contended that Aadhaar helped these alleged illegal immigrants “get all facilities and government schemes”. He added, “So, even if they do not have election ID cards, they can open back accounts, get subsidies and live comfortably.”

The issue of alleged illegal migration has impeded Aadhaar enrolment in neighbouring Assam too. The enrolment rate for Aadhaar in that state is the lowest in the country at just over 7%. Meghalaya has the second lowest rate at 14.3%. In Assam, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government has ordered a ban on new Aadhaar enrolment since January till the state finishes updating its National Register of Citizens. This register, which is being updated for the first time since 1951, claims to be an inventory of all legal citizens of Assam.