Thread by @logic

#AadhaarScam - Was it the telcos / #AadhaarEcosystem who got benefited OR both - at the cost individuals - Lets dig deeper

https://twitter.com/mayhempsingh/status/1512468059948158981

How much is the revenue loss determined by CAG?
1. 637 Crore eKYC x ₹ 20 = ₹ 12740 Crores
2. 2491 authentication x ₹ 0.5 = ₹ 1245.5 Crores

₹ 13985.5 Crores - revenue loss due to non-fixation of price. UIDAI made a "concious" decision to forego the revenue, without any trail

The @UIDAI justified the loss saying - that is what led to increased usage.

But a small fact - Charging eKYC to private operators has no relation to mandatory #Aadhaar for rations and office attendane (which was made around the same time period) that actually led to higher auth.

How significant is the ₹ 13,985.5 Crores for @UIDAI?

₹ 12,873.93 Crores is the total expenditure of @UIDAI from its 2009 till date.

What's worse - @UIDAI is now financially autonomous (also no income tax, everything goes to "UIDAI Fund") as per #AadhaarAmendmentBill 2019 already made 550+ Crores, giving only 30 Crores to govt.

1. #CAG that is crawling here because it benefitted Jio / #Aadhaar Ecosystem. #AadhaarScam

https://twitter.com/mayhempsingh/status/1512468067502071812

2. Their assessment that its only "two major" telcos is clearly wrong, because India back then had 4 private telco operators - and *ALL* of them threatened disconnection by 2017 Feb because @rssharma3 and @TRAI read a SC order incorrectly and coerced telcos and users to link.

So besides the new telco Jio - for every other operator reverification of KYC was a regulatory cost imposed. They bent and paid up 2000 Crores, because they had larger taxation issues with govt.

But who else it benefitted? - It created a "Minimum guarentee" of transactions for #Aadhaar authentication - that meant - more biometric devices sold, more transactions for "Aadhaar Ecosystem" third parties which develop API / tooling for reverification.

Remember - the same people who argued "for Aadhaar" in the Supreme Court case economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/p…

It gets even more interesting in Oct 2020 (outside the scope of Audit report) when telcos sought "scrapping of charges for Aadhaar-based e-KYC authentication"

telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/cost-of-a…

and surprise surprise - In Oct - @UIDAI released "The Aadhaar (Pricing of Aadhaar Authentication Services) Regulations, 2021 (No. 1 of 2021)" and priced eKYC at ₹ 1 for telecom operators and ₹ 3 for other entities.

How did something that was priced ₹ 20 in 2019 - come down to ₹ 3 (Even if you discount the preferential discount of ₹ 2 to telecom service providers)?

What is the pricing mechanism?

So those who deferred determining pricing also ran firms that provided services for profit - That is small part of the #AadhaarScam

#Aadhaar officials part of private firms that use Aadhaar services for profit

indianexpress.com/article/india/…