UIDAI says its system detected attempts by Kanpur gang to generate fake Aadhaar cards

The UIDAI today said its technical system that detected some abnormal activities and foiled bid to generate fake Aadhaar card by a gang arrested by Uttar Pradesh police. The UP Special Task Force **arrested 10 people on Saturday from Kanpur** on the charge of counterfeiting Aadhaar. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that it had filed a complaint on August 16 before the UP STF and asked to investigate the case regarding some “rogue and unscrupulous elements” trying to misuse operators mandatory authentication login for enrolment process. [caption id=“attachment_3985593” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. CNN-News18[/caption] “UIDAIs technological system and architecture is so robust and resilient that it detected some anomalies and abnormal activities in the enrolment process. UIDAI took cognisance of it and filed a complaint with UP STF along with the details of such operators and enrolment agencies for further investigation and necessary action under law,” UIDAI said. In a statement, UP STF has said that culprits were able to clone fingerprints and later developed application to bypass iris scan as well. The team, led by Inspector General Amitabh Yash and DIG Manoj Tiwari, said that the gang was successful in making Aadhaar card and entire Aadhaar enrolment process will be audited. However, UIDAI said the attempt to generate fake Aadhaar card was foiled by the robust UIDAI system and the arrested gang could not succeed in its “nefarious and illegal designs”. UIDAI said its system accepts only devices certified by governments certification arm STQC for the enrolment or authentication purposes and its system rejects interaction of an unauthorised device if the device is not as per the protocol of the UIDAI standard processes. “Therefore, it does not affect to UIDAI’s data and processing system as from where and who is trying to play with. But, UIDAI takes up strict legal and other necessary action required in such cases. UIDAI has filed 8 FIRs this year itself against such unscrupulous elements,” the authority said. UIDAI said that if operators or supervisors are found involved in corrupt practices, they are blacklisted from the system for 5 years. Additionally the concerned enrolment agency is also penalised with Rs 50,000 penalty along with other legal action. The authority said that since December 2016 over 6,100 overcharging incidents have been penalised for Rs 10,000 for each of the incident and from July 2017, 466 such incidents have been penalised Rs 50,000 for each incident. “Since inception UIDAI has blacklisted over 49,000 operators for violation of UIDAI processes, including corrupt practices,” the authority said.