'Stop Collection Of Students' Aadhaar Numbers' : Plea In Kerala High Court Against Centre's UDISE+ Platform

The Kerala High Court has sought the response of the Union Government and the Kerala Government on a petition which challenges the collection of Aadhaar number of students and parents for the Unified District Information System for Education Plus ('UDISE+') platform.UDISE+ is a program initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Union Ministry of Education, which organises and classifies all school data from across the country for the purpose of building a credible database of school data. It publishes annual flash statistics reports based on the database collected from schools across the country. The petitioner, an organization named Democratic Alliance For Knowledge Freedom (DAKF), challenged the collection of personal data, including the Aadhaar number, of students and the mobile numbers parents, by the Unified District Information System for Education Plus ('UDISE+') platform. The plea seeks a direction to be issued to the Central Government and the MeitY to forthwith and immediately stop the collection of personal data of students and their parents through the UDISE+ portal. The petitioner also seeks that the letters issued by the Central Government authorities to States for collection of data for UDISE+ be set aside.It also seeks the issuance of directions to the respondent authorities to delete all personal information collected from students and their parents in the portal, and to not transfer such personal information to any third party including Government departments, Government agencies and private parties. On Monday (October 30), a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice A.J. Desai and Justice V.G. Arun issued notice and sought the response of the Union Ministry of Education, Union IT Ministry and Kerala Public Education Department.The matter has been posted for further consideration on November 23, 2023.The petitioner states that as per the website of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the Student Database Management System is developed to manage the records of the students such as Student Profile, Enrolment, Dropouts, Transfers, Progression / Holdback, and so on, which would help in generating reports at the Central, State, district, block, and school level. This Management System which comprises information of the student from States / Autonomous Bodies (Federated Entities) and converges it for various schools consistently at national level, is deployed for various States, Autonomous bodies, School Management as a separate instance as their need, and also provides the requisite information to UDISE+. The petitioner avers that the Central Government, upon noting that the enrolment data of various schools, institutions, and organization imparting education within the purview of the State Government is not provided in the UDISE+, issued a letter calling for efforts to be made to seed Aadhaar number in respect of maximum possible students and to provide the same while pushing data in UDISE+. The petitioner states that while the Government decided to capture the enrolment data covered under State Government purview through UDISE+ in a bid to improve India's ranking in global indices, such as 'Human Capital Index (HCI)', 'Expected Years of Schooling'(EYS), and so on, and emphasized upon the collection of Aadhaar number, which had hitherto not been required, the object of collecting such data from students has however not been specified. It is submitted that the Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) also subsequently issued a letter, giving specific emphasis on completion of data entry of the school students in UDISE+ for the academic year 2022-23 on or before August 31, 2023, and that Aadhaar number of the students as well as the teachers were demanded in Part 1 of UDISE+ 2023-24 DCF form. The petitioner adds that other personal information of students as well as their parents including Aadhaar number, address and mobile number are also collected, without any consent mechanism. The petitioner avers that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had specifically stated in its circular issued in 2018 that no child would be deprived/denied of their benefits or rights for want of Aadhaar. It further submits that as per the Data Sharing Policy for School Education & Literacy issued in September 2020, by DoSEL, data available with DoSEL has been categorized as sensitive and non-sensitive, with sensitive data being shareable only on the basis of a specific authorised request on a case to case basis, backed by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) between the requestor and DoSEL. "The policy has made it very clear about the objectives behind the collection of different data by the DoSEL. These does not anywhere indicate the collection of Aadhar number as it is a Personally Identifiable Information. It also does not indicate the need for collecting other Personally Identifiable information," the petitioner adds. The petitioner thus...

'Stop Collection Of Students' Aadhaar Numbers' : Plea In Kerala High Court Against Centre's UDISE+ Platform

Navya Benny

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