Delhi HC issues notice to UIDAI as Google Pay's privacy comes under question

The Delhi High Court issued a notice to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and others on Wednesday regarding a petition against Google Pay alleging unauthorised operations under the banking laws. A Division Bench made the decision comprising of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh and has directed the Unique Identification Authority of India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Google India Digital Services Private Limited to respond to the petition as soon as possible. The justice bench has provided them the date of November 8 for further hearing on the matter.

Public interest litigation (PIL) matter was filed individually by Abhijit Mishra and he highlighted a possible breach of privacy over the issue of unauthorised access, use and storing of the Aadhar and banking information of Indian citizens by Google Pay. This is also a violation of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, Aadhar Act 2016, Payments and Settlement Systems Act 2007 and Banking Regulations Act 1949. The petitioner further pointed out a statement in the terms and conditions of Google Play that the android app store will be collecting, storing and sharing the bank account details or a user’s Aadhar card details.

Abhijit Mishra further appealed to the bench to start legal proceedings for the responsible parties in this breach of privacy. The court will now be directing UIDAI to initiate legal actions against Google Pay under the violation of Section 29, Section 38 and Section 43 of the Aadhar Act 2016 for collecting, storing and using the Aadhar information of the citizens. Mishra also asked the court to direct UIDAI to issue strict SOPs under Section 23A, Section 28, Section 29 of the Aadhar Act, 2016 to protect the data of the citizens.

AADHAR card’s long list of privacy concerns

Earlier this year in June, an unknown website showed that the data of 150 million vaccinated Indians was available for sale on the dark web. The government denied that there was any data breach and later said that the matter was under investigation. The Cowin portal is used by Indians to book their vaccination slot for COVID-19 vaccination and during the booking, a citizen must submit their Aadhar card or any other government-issued ID card along with their phone numbers. The website said that along with the Aadhar Card details, the phone numbers were also leaked.

With ANI inputs