Tribune Aadhaar expose fetches journalist award

Tribune News Service
Mumbai, June 24

Rachna Khaira has bagged the prestigious RedInk “Journalist of the Year” award for her far-reaching expose in 2018 on the functioning of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and its Aadhaar data cache. The story appeared in The Tribune edition dated January 4, 2018.

The investigation confirmed that personal data of millions of citizens was at risk of being hacked or traded for a price. By running a series, the journalist was able to raise serious doubts over government claims that Aadhaar data stored on UIDAI servers was safe and secure.

Many of the leads provided by her became part of a PIL, which finally led to the onerous and mandatory aspects of Aadhaar being watered down.

Also read: Fine-tuning Aadhaar

Khaira currently works for The Huffington Post. The Mumbai Press Club, which has instituted the RedInk Awards for Excellence in Journalism, has bestowed the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award this year jointly on two retired senior journalists—Dinu Ranadive, 94, who retired from the Maharashtra Times, and photojournalist Sebastian D’Souza, who served as Photo Editor for Mumbai Mirror.