UIDAI fails to furnish financial details of foreign contract under RTI
11 Dec, 2013
An application was filed with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get information about the financial details of the contract signed with French company Sagem Morpho Security for purchase of biometric authentication devices. The application also sought to know the financial details of its contracts with two other multinational companies- L1 Identity Solutions and Ernst & Young.
The UIDAI, though furnished the details of amount paid to L1 Identity Solutions and Ernst & Young, it couldn't provide the details regarding Sagem Morpho Security deal. The reply to the application stated that the authority was trying to locate the data. As per the data provided, UIDAI signed the contract with L1 identity solutions in July, 2010 for Rs. 33.87 crore and with Ernst & Young in February, 2010 for around Rs. 7 crore. L1 Identity Solutions was later acquired by French corporate conglomerate Safran SA Group which also owns Sagem Morpho Security Pvt Ltd. - whose data the Aadhar claims to be missing.
The activists, on the other hand, expressed apprehension that the financial details are part of the agreement signed and if the authority claims that it needed to locate the data, it implies that it might be trying to cover something.