Moody’s allegations on Aadhaar privacy, welfare exclusion baseless: Government

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Aadhaar authentication requirements, saying it was without any evidence or basis.

“The report in question does not cite either primary or secondary data or research in support of the opinions presented in it,” the government said in a statement.

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Moody’s, in a report titled «Decentralised Finance and Digital Assets», questioned the reliability of using Aadhaar in welfare services. “The system often results in service denials, and the reliability of biometric technologies, especially for manual labourers in hot, humid climates, is questionable,” the report said.

Aadhaar is “the most trusted digital ID in the world,” the government said in a late night statement on Monday. “While the vote of confidence of a billion-plus Indians is sufficient testimony to the value offered by Aadhaar, it is pertinent that a number of international agencies, including the IMF and World Bank, have lauded the role of Aadhaar. Several nations have also been engaged with the Authority to understand how they may deploy similar digital ID systems.”
The report was making an ‘obvious’ reference to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the government said, but neglected the fact that Aadhaar seeding to the MGNREGS database was done without biometric authentication of workers.

Further, it neglected that payment under the scheme is credited directly to the workers’ bank