Tribune response to UIDAI email on Aadhaar expose

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 8

The Tribune has responded to queries sent by the Unique Identification Authority of India following the newspaper’s stories on the Aadhaar expose.

In a mail sent to The Tribune on January 6, the UIDAI’s regional office at Chandigarh had sought the following information:

“1.    Whether it was at all possible for your correspondent to view or obtain Fingerprints and Iris scan of any person through the aforesaid access to UIDAI portal?

“2.    How many Aadhaar numbers did the correspondent actually enter through the said login user id and password and whom did those Aadhaar numbers belong to?

“You are requested to send your response to UIDAI on the sender’s email by 8th January, 2018 failing which it will be presumed that there was no access to any Fingerprints and/or Iris scan.”

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The following is The Tribune’s response to the UIDAI:

The ADG, Chandigarh,

Regional Office, Chandigarh

Unique Identification Authority of India,

Government of India

Subject: Published news reports of The Tribune on 4th January 2018 by the reporter Ms Rachna Khaira titled “Rs. 500, 10 Minutes, and you have access to billion Aadhaar details” and another report by TNS dated 5th January 2018 titled “UIDAI says Tribune story ‘misreporting’, read how that is wrong”, regd.

Sir,

We are in receipt of your letter sent through email at 23.43 hours on January 6th, 2018. Our response to the said communication is as under:

We understand an FIR has already been lodged by the UIDAI against ‘The Tribune’ and/or its reporter Ms. Rachna Khaira in the instant matter. The instant communication is inexplicable.

Please be informed that ‘The Tribune’ is a responsible newspaper and publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind. Regarding news reports being mentioned in your letter, we were so concerned with the sensitivity and importance of the matter that we disclosed our sources in the news item(s) itself so as to enable the authorities to look into the concerns immediately. However, your communication, asking either to send response to your queries or you would presume that there was no access to any Fingerprints and/or Iris scan, indicates that the matter is not being dealt with seriously.

It is reiterated that complete facts have already been given in the news reports published by The Tribune. We feel sorry that the authorities are unable to appreciate that a breach has taken place.

Still, we are more than happy to provide you any such information and will assist UIDAI to maintain integrity of the Aadhaar data. For that purpose, we believe that it would be appropriate if a duly authorised person came over and interacted with us so that we can answer all queries and follow-up questions, if any, in a comprehensive manner rather than entering into protracted correspondence in this matter.

Sd/-

Editor-in-Chief

The Tribune Group of Publications