BJP blasts Aadhar scheme, vows review if in power

The Bharatiya Janata Party said the manner in which the Aadhaar project is being implemented is dangerous to the country's security, and indicated that it may review some of its aspects if it comes to power.

Speaking to presspersons in Bangalore on the sidelines of an interaction with college students on election issues on Tuesday, both BJP national spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi and five-time BJP MP Ananth Kumar also sought a CBI probe into various aspects of the Aadhaar project, including the manner in which finances had been allocated for it.

When asked if the BJP would scrap the project if it comes to power, Lekhi said, ''Aadhaar needs a re-look to see if anything has gone wrong and to know who stores and shares the biometric data of citizens.''

Earlier, at the interaction, she launched an attack on Unique Identification Authority of India chairman and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, who is taking on Ananth Kumar directly in Bangalore South on a Congress ticket in the upcoming elections.

Lekhi said Aadhaar was a project for which its chief had to be condemned rather than appreciated. ''I would be ashamed to take credit for such a project,'' she said.

Without naming Nilekani, Lekhi alleged that the Aadhaar project regularised the stay of illegal immigrants from other countries by granting citizenship to them at the cost of the welfare of genuine residents.

The Aadhaar project had violated parliamentary norms and the direction issued by the Supreme Court to ensure that it was not made mandatory for offering services and foreign citizens were not enrolled under it, she said.

Kumar meanwhile said he saw no electoral threat from technocrat-turned-politician Nilekani, and also called the Aadhaar scheme a national threat. 

"Aadhar card is not at all good for India. It should be scrapped because non-citizens should not be given cards. Cards should be given on basis of citizenship. Secondly, data of citizens cannot be held by a US company, which is servicing Pakistan also," Kumar said.

When asked whether he sees this as a formidable battle, Kumar said, "I don't think so because already the Congress has run away from the battlefield. The people of Bangalore know that whatever good has happened is because of Ananth Kumar and they also see the record of Narendra Modi as tried, tested and trusted."

Nilekani had on Monday said that there is no Narendra Modi wave in the country while praising Rahul Gandhi. "Rahul Gandhi's ideas are revolutionary. He is an agent of change and has brilliant ideas," Nilekani said in a TV interview. Nilekani added that he intended to partner Rahul in making that change happen.

The Congress last won Bangalore South in 1989 when the former Karnataka chief minister, the late R Gundu Rao, won by a huge margin.