Shillong, Oct 16: The Meghalaya Peoples’ Committee on Aadhaar (MPCA) on Tuesday asked the government to put on hold Aadhaar enrolment.

The demand came in view of reports that during the first six months of 2018, almost one billion records were compromised in Aadhaar breach incident, including name, address and other personally identified information.

“This is particularly concerning, since the stolen, lost or compromised data records of only one out of 12 breaches were protected by encryption to render the information useless. The index is a global database of public data breaches, revealing 945 data breaches led to 4.5 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018. Compared to the same period period in 2017, the number of lost, stolen or compromised records increased by a staggering 133 percent, though the total number of breaches slightly decreased over the same period, signalling an increase in severity of each incident,” the MPCA said while quoting reports on data breaches.

The MPCA had convened a meeting on Monday to appraise the people on the September-26 ruling of the Supreme Court on Aadhaar where Aadhaar was voluntary with regard to bank accounts, mobile, internet and website connection, for school admissions including CBSE, NEET, UGC.

The MPCA also decided to facilitate those who wanted to opt out of Aadhaar, while expressing concern that Aadhaar was made mandatory for Central and State governments’ welfare schemes, including subsidies like PDS, and LPG.

“Though the Supreme Court Bench (4-1) have struck down Sections 33 (1) & (2), 47 & 57, and asked the Government to bring out a robust data protection law, is it enough? These breaches which started since 2013 and probably accelerated when present NDA-II Government pushed Aadhaar enrolment by making it mandatory for almost each and every need and even blowing trumpet that more than a billion Indians now have Aadhaar, obviously, attract provisions of Sections 4, 8 (2)(b), 28, 29, 30, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 48, and that Section 52 must be presently waived or shelved and in the next session of Parliament struck down as this Section abnegates accountability and responsibility of UIDAI and any other Government agency both of Central and States,” it said.

The MPCA said that it is incumbent upon the Government to put on hold Aadhaar enrolment and requiring Aadhaar identity for benefits of subsidies, and other benefits as this ‘breach is critical to security and privacy.’

The MPCA would also urge the Supreme Court to constitute an SC -monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by either a sitting or retired SC judge to go into all this and submit its report within a set time frame.