Patna, Feb. 21: Activists today met at a national seminar to deliberate on the idea of unique identification number (UID)/Aadhaar Project at AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies here.

Gopal Krishna, a member of the Citizens’ Forum for Civil Liberties, said: “The UID project threatens citizens’ privacy as data of an individual will not be secret. The Union government has planned to introduce the new scheme without holding any discussion at any forum.” There should be proper discussion over the matter before introduction of any new scheme; however, in UID number scheme there was neither any at parliament nor at any other forum.

Speakers opined that the idea of a 12-digit number is unlikely to rectify the problems of poor people, as it will help little in checking massive corruption in the public distribution system supposed to provide food to poor families.

Noted jurist Usha Ramnathan said: “The involvement of firms such as Ernst & Young and Accenture raises further questions about who will have access to the data that belongs to the people of India.”

Ramnathan added: “The biggest misuse of the system will be the hackers accessing the database and passing on information to commercial outfits, intelligence agencies or even criminals gangs.”

Nandan Nilekani, co-founder and vice-chairman of Infosys Technologies, is heading the UID project to identify every Indian with a number.

The government views that with the introduction of the UID number, the poor people will benefit the most because they lack identity documentation which is generally ignored by the service providers such as the public distribution system.