Aadhaar is for empowerment, not Big Brother: UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey

'In order for somebody to do Big Brother kind of a job, one has to collect lots of data and Aadhaar collects very minimal data', he said

At a time when civil society and the public at large have raised concerns over the overarching power the government has given to the Aadhaar programme, AJAY BHUSHAN PANDEY, CEO, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), told Kiran Rathee that the idea of Aadhaar being used as a Big Brother programme for the government to spy on citizens is completely unfounded. Moreover, while some people have been asking to get external agencies to review the security of Aadhaar, Pandey says being a critical state function, it’s better to not “be disclosing all your cards to everybody”. Edited excerpts:

UIDAI is