Chandigarh: The Haryana assembly on Tuesday passed a Bill aimed at creating a unique identification number for each family, while preparing a database enabling the families to access various government services.
The Haryana Parivar Pehchan Bill, 2021 was passed by the state assembly amid strong opposition by the Congress, which questioned its need and raised several concerns over the security of the data collected for preparing Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP or the family IDs).
Demanding the withdrawal of the Bill, senior Congress leader Kiran Choudhary described it as a draconian law, which will have serious ramifications. “This is being brought in haste. The intention of this bill is insidious. It will end the privacy of common citizens”, she claimed in the House. “A common hacker can breach the data. The law is an infringement of privacy rights. We are guiding ourselves towards a totalitarian regime. The common man will be exposed to snooping. This is an infringement of our fundamental rights”, she further alleged.
Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who is also the leader of opposition, demanded that the Bill be withdrawn, saying it is not in the interest of democracy.
Congress member Geeta Bhukkal questioned the need of bringing the law, saying, “We already have multiple ID’s including Aadhaar. Who is going to benefit from this entire mega exercise of collecting data?” She also demanded that the Bill be withdrawn.
Responding to the opposition’s charges, chief minister M.L Khattar said, “The right to privacy issue which is being raised by the opposition members is not an issue for the poor and added only those who have something to hide have this concern”. On opposition members’ concerns, Khattar told them that the PPP is not mandatory.
Kiran Choudhary, however, contended that it will virtually become mandatory to avail various government services including its use in land registries.
According to the Bill, “A Haryana Parivar Pehchan Authority (HPPA) will be established. Every family, being a resident of Haryana shall be entitled to obtain a Parivar Pehchan number by providing, submitting or updating on the designated portal, information comprising of such data fields, as may be notified by the authority with the prior approval of the state government.”
“The Parivar Pehchan number would be for determining the eligibility for or the provision of any scheme, service, subsidy or benefit provided or implemented by or on behalf of state government or any government agency or local authority,” the Bill added.
Targeting the opposition, Khattar said, “The Haryana government is coming up with reformative schemes, which it seems are not acceptable to the opposition parties and making them feel jittery.”
He further said, “No one built a system for the state benefits reaching the last person standing in the queue. Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) scheme (family IDs) has been formulated to deliver the benefits of the schemes to that last person”.
Khattar said that work is being done on this scheme for the last three years and 64 lakh families in the state have been registered in the PPP so far.
The family ID will help citizens of Haryana to take advantage of and avail government services, the chief minister said. He further pointed out that data is needed to facilitate the citizens of Haryana, and different departments have their own data which sometimes does not match with each other. The PPP scheme has been prepared, keeping this in mind and it will help consolidate various data.
The chief minister said, “The birth, death and marriage registrations would also be linked with the PPP. With this, real-time data will be available to us. It will make planning and the implementation of various welfare schemes easier”. He adding that out of 3.3 lakh government employees of Haryana, 2,98,274 employees have got their PPP made.
He insisted that the data will remain completely safe and secure. “IT security features have been used to secure the data of the PPP. No one can use this information without permission. If there is any kind of theft of this data, a provision of punishment has also been made,” he sought to assure the assembly.
Khattar also said, recently the German ambassador to India during a meeting with him, had praised the state government’s PPP project.