Prasad said the government saved about Rs 50,000 crore

LPG subsidy due to the linking of Aadhaar card with Jhan Dhan accounts.

"The World Bank and a UN body have clearly stated that the extraordinary technological innovation of India needs to be followed by the world. Surely they (UPA government) started it, but after improvements, it is showing results and the benefits have to be considered objectively," he said.

The Aadhaar scheme was started by the UPA government.

"Now there is a robust legisation that has laid down the entire format of how the biometric data will be collected, processed, stored and under what terms and conditions will it be used," Prasad said.

If there is unauthorised use of Aadhaar card details, the law provides for prosecution and punishment for up to 3 years, he added.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh attacked the government for making Aadhaar mandatory, saying it is gross violation of the Supreme Court orders.

Making Aadhaar mandatory for availing subsidies was resulting in exclusion of beneficiaries and the government cannot claim to have saved huge subsidies by this, he said.

Elaborating on implementation issues, Ramesh said the government claims to have saved Rs 49,000 crore LPG subsidies by linking with Aadhaar but a CAG report has debunked this in a recent report.

The CAG has found that 92 per cent of the savings in LPG subsidy was due to fall in global crude oil prices and not due to Aadhaar seeding, he said, adding that similar was the case with food subidy, old-age pension and MNREGA.

Initiating the debate, Rajeev Chandrashekar (Ind) expressed concern over fake aadhaar cards, data integrity and privacy issues and also exclusion of subsidies by making it mandatory.

He said he was not against the Aadhaar system but the risks and problems need to be addressed by the government. The government should not take a "rigid position".

On fake Aadhaar cards, Chandrashekar said the government has inherited "100 crore unverified database" created prior to bringing the law in 2016.

When there is "clear evidence" of fake Aadhaar, he sought to know what safeguards the UIDAI had taken before permitting Aadhaar for use as an identification beyond delivering subsidies. "This needs to be answered," he said.

During his reply, Prasad, the IT Minister, said while the past government added optical network of 358 km in three years starting 2011, the present government in the past 2.5 years has added 1.78 lakh kilometers.

He said curently 80,000 villages have been covered in the country and more would be added.

"In the past government, only Rs 11,000 crore investment came in the electronics sector. In our government there has been an investment of over Rs 1.27 lakh crore," he said.

"In their time there used to be a Nokia company which shut down. We in the last two years manufactured 12 crore mobiles through 72 factories across the country," he added.

"We never said they (previous government) did not used to do good work. They used to begin good work but it is our duty to make it better. That is why the people have brought us to power," Prasad said.

To improve infrastructure will be the governmt's priority, he added.

Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien said demographic data of 5 lakh minors was leaked and government should look into the matter.

"If you protect MS Dhoni, it is good but at the same time, you should also protect small people," he said.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)