The architect of India's biometrics-backed unique ID system has said that it will be used for numerous services despite legal challenges it faces over privacy.Speaking to Mint, Nandan Nilekani said Aadhaar has flourished despite political changes and that it would weather attempts by the Supreme Court to limits its use.”The new [Narendra Modi] government has embraced Aadhaar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi reviews it every month in his Pragati meetings, and now it has crossed 930 million. The Supreme Court has not put any restriction on enrolment, so that will continue and will hit a billion soon,” he said.”The second thing is usage is going up. The Supreme Court had initially said it is only limited to LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), kerosene, PDS (public distribution system). But then there was an appeal. It was unusual as more than a dozen people made this appeal, state governments appealed, the regulator appealed.”Then the Supreme Court further expanded it to include pensions, EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organisation), NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and Jan Dhan Yojana. So it is a question of 400 million families, someone will have EPFO, someone will have LPG. In that way everyone is linked to Aadhaar in some way or the other”.He argued that, given the state of personal data being mined by Apple and Google, that the Supreme Court's privacy challenge showed “massive hypocrisy”.”Whatever you search goes to Cupertino, someone in Cupertino knows what you are doing, Google knows what you are searching ߪ but if you want to have a programme where a billion Indians' privacy can be saved, we are all like no! So this argument related to Aadhaar is a case of massive hypocrisy. Aadhaar is here to stay, it is not going anywhere.”

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