Digital rights group opposes need for Aadhaar authentication to access grievance portal

Digital rights group Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has shot a letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), urging it to reconsider making Aadhaar mandatory for accessing grievance redressal portal.

The grievance redressal mechanism portal was recently launched by the Government of India as a part of the amendment to the Information Technology Rules 2021. First-time users of the platform are required to identify themselves by completing the Aadhaar authentication process.

In a letter dated March 2, addressed to Union Minister of Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, SFLC's legal director Prasanth Sugathan said that the compulsory requirement of an Aadhaar number for accessing the portal, instead of alternative documents, “creates an obstacle to the exercise of a users' fundamental rights, guaranteed under Article 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India”.

"This effectively makes access to the services of the GAC contingent upon the furnishing of one’s Aadhaar number. Such a process violates the law laid down by the Honourable Supreme Court of India in  Justice KS Puttaswamy (Retd) vs Union of India," Prasanth Sugathan wrote in the letter.

"In light of the above, we request you to kindly revisit the matter urgently, and allow appellants/prospective appellants to establish their identities through alternative means (such as alternative government-issued identification), in keeping with the Supreme Court’s directions," he added.

On February 28, the ministry had launched the portal for users to submit their appeals on decisions of grievance redressal officers of platforms such as Meta, Google, etc. The online GAC portal is supposed to segregate the complaints based on their subjects and escalate them to the relevant committees.

In January, the government notified three grievance appellate committees after it decided to introduce tighter scrutiny to the grievance redressal processes of intermediaries.