PS Deodhar is former advisor to Rajiv Gandhi on electronics, but even his article in 2009, highlighting the problems with Aadhaar, was ignored in a hurry to push through Nandan Nilekani's ambitious and expensive UID scheme

PS Deodhar

On 1 July 2009, in a Delhi seminar on the subject of national identification (NID) card, I opposed the proposal to get into national ID cards for every citizen in the country. I fully endorsed the need to create “Citizen Data Base” by allocating a unique national identity number (NIN) to every citizen and resident of India as was suggested by our former President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, sometime ago in context of voter’s list. Let me also first establish my credentials by adding that I am a technologist who had brought smart card technology to India 23 years ago and I have followed ID card technology since, having personally developed India’s own smart card pay phone as well as applications for smart cards in financial and health sectors. Smart Card Forum of India in 2002 named me as “Smart Card Pioneer in India.”  Yet I opposed this move.

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