New Rejecting all the four amendments proposed by the Rajya Sabha, the Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Finance Bill. The Rajya Sabha can only recommend changes to the Finance Bill and not block the legislation as the Upper House doesn’t have a say in the matters of money bills. On Wednesday, the House saw a lively exchange between the Opposition and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The Opposition has been relentless in their criticism against the government. The Congress have accused the BJP-led government of circumventing the House procedure and incorporating amendments for several other laws in a money bill. The debate also saw discussion on transparency in political funding, linking of Aadhaar card, merging of several tribunals.
Former finance minister P Chidambaram sought for guarantees over the safety of the Aadhaar data, saying that it is vulnerable to hacking attacks and leakages. “The larger question, that is being raised, and I think you should answer is, how will you protect the privacy of transactions in bank accounts? How will you protect the privacy of facts, material in the income tax returns? The Pentagon has been hacked, and five hundred million accounts have been hacked…what is the guarantee that you have the technology to prevent hacking of bank accounts, hacking of income tax accounts through the Aadhaar number?” he asked.
In his reply, Jaitley said that it was wrong to question find fault with the Aadhaar scheme as technology is always vulnerable to attacks. “The Pentagon got hacked even without the Aadhaar being there…the fact that technologies can be broken into, can never be an argument to say don’t have technology. The answer is that your firewalls..must be strong enough,” he said.
