No breach in Aadhaar card holders' data, Union Minister tells Rajya Sabha

This came as a written response from Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw while replying to a question from DMK MP P Wilson, who enquired about the number of Aadhaar card holders whose data has been leaked in the last three years.

New Delhi: No breach in Aadhaar card holders’ data has occurred from the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) maintained by the Unique Identification Authority of India, in which the database of biometric and demographic information of Aadhaar is maintained, the government said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. It also added that CIDR is not linked to any external database, such as bank databases.

This came as a written response from Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw while replying to a question from DMK MP P Wilson, who enquired about the number of Aadhaar card holders whose data has been leaked in the last three years. It is pertinent to note here that in a shocking development last month, a major data breach was reported where in the private information of lakhs of Indians registered on the CoWIN app to avail Covid vaccination shots was reportedly leaked to private players. Several media outlets had reported that personal information such as Aadhaar card, Pan card and passport details were leaked, which also included the names of several big politicians.

It was also claimed that the passport details of individuals, who updated their CoWIN portal for international travel were also leaked. As per the reports, a Telegram bot leaked phone numbers, Aadhaar numbers, Date of Birth (DoB), and other key details of all those who took vaccines using the CoWIN app in the last three years, putting the personal information of lakhs of individuals at a risk. The government had then said that the breach of data was "without any basis" and had requested the country's nodal cyber security agency CERT-In to look into the issue and submit a report.