Moody's report on Aadhaar made sweeping assertions without citing any evidence: UIDAI

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) claimed on Monday that the international credit rating firm Moody’s Investors Service has made broad allegations against Aadhaar without providing any evidence.

The UIDAI offered a robust pushback to Moody’s Investors Service, which argued that the Aadhaar system frequently results in service denials and that the reliability of biometric technology, particularly for manual workers, is doubtful in hot and humid climes.

“A certain investor service has, without citing any evidence or basis, made sweeping assertions against Aadhaar, the most trusted digital ID in the world. Over the last decade, over a billion Indians have expressed their trust in Aadhaar by using it to authenticate themselves over 100 billion times,” the UIDAI said in a statement.

The unique id Aadhaar’s custodian said that the report in question does not cite either primary or secondary data or research in support of the opinions presented in it.

“The investor service did not make any attempt to ascertain facts regarding the issues raised by it from the Authority. The sole reference cited in the report is in respect of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), by referring to its website. However, the report incorrectly cites the number of Aadhaars issued as 1.2 billion, although the website prominently gives the updated numbers,” the UIDAI said.

It said that the report ignores that biometric submission is also possible through contactless means such as face authentication and iris authentication.

“In addition, the option of mobile OTP is also available in many use cases. The report also avers that there are security and privacy vulnerabilities in a centralised Aadhaar system. The factual position in this regard has been repeatedly disclosed in response to Parliament questions, where Parliament has been categorically informed that till date no breach has been reported from the Aadhaar database,” the statement said.

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