"It's incumbent upon the government to give a detailed reason as to why somebody's Aadhaar is being deactivated," activist Anjali Bhardwaj told The Quint, days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that the Aadhaar IDs of people, especially from the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities of West Bengal, had been indiscriminately deactivated.
On 19 February, Union Minister Shantanu Thakur held a press conference where he attributed the alleged mass deactivation of Aadhaar numbers to "some technical fault."
"It seems that the Higher Level Officials and the Ministry were completely unaware of such step taken by the Regional Office at Ranchi," revealed BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, adding that an investigation is likely to be conducted.
However, several questions continue to loom. How many Aadhaar numbers have been deactivated? Does it matter if they’ve been deactivated and not cancelled? What are the consequences felt by the deactivated Aadhaar holders? And why has the digital snafu sparked fears over the prospect of a National Register of Citizens (NRC)?