Read the Telangana govt’s Unified Card press release here: [ X | Facebook ] 

The Telangana (TG) government proposed ‘Unified Card’, a state-level Aadhaar-like AI-based welfare aggregation and citizen profiling system for dynamic tracking of 360-degree state beneficiary data. On May 27, Telangana CM Revanth Reddy and State IT Minister D. Sridhar Babu met Chief Secretary K. Ramakrishna Rao to discuss implementing a Unified Card project.

TG aims at Aadhaar-like state-level data: “He asked to explore, if needed, creating a state-level unique identity number on the lines of Aadhaar. The data from the Socio-Economic, Education, Employment, Political, and Caste (SEEEPC) Survey should also be merged with the Unified Card profile.”

Data collection drive for 360-degree data tracking: “He instructed for initiating a special drive to collect individual and family-oriented data of all citizens in the state. The data collection drive shall act as a precursor to the creation of the first-ever AI-based profiling system for dynamic tracking of 360-degree beneficiary data,” read the press release. The State’s IT Department will be responsible for the creation of Unified Cards.

The Unified Card will compile individual profiles with data points across welfare departments, including:

• AarogyaSri, 
• Chief Minister’s Relief Fund (CMRF), 
• Fees Reimbursement, 
• Labour and Education. 

Using AI-based profiling to track death certificates and pension disumberments as one of the use cases: “The CM shared an example use case for the AI-based profiling system—ensuring that issuance of a death certificate is automatically routed to the database pertaining to Cheyutha pensions.” Cheyutha refers to the social security and welfare program that aims to provide monthly financial assistance to permanent residents of Telangana who fall under the Below Poverty Line (BPL) and have a white ration card.

Some more specific use cases of Unified Card: 

• Eliminating benefit duplication
• Identifying ineligible individuals
• Reducing bureaucratic delay
• Eliminating human interface
• Centralized welfare delivery assessment
• Contract and outsourcing employee profiling
• Health profile integration
• Migration ecosystem management, especially to reduce the involvement of “unauthorised persons and agents”
• Cross-departmental tracking of individual benefits drawn from schemes.

This is a permanent state surveillance infrastructure, argues SQ Masood, Hyderabad-based human rights activist, while referring to the Telangana government’s announcement of Unified Card.  “Consolidating sensitive data across health, caste & entitlements under one ID creates an unconstitutional panopticon & enables discrimination. This directly violates the landmark Puttaswamy judgment,” he further said on X. 

Risks of AI-driven automated discrimination of poor: “Furthermore, the Court [in the Puttaswamy judgment] explicitly warned against data aggregation targeting marginalised populations and forcing the poor to surrender privacy as a precondition for survival, reducing unique humans to data points and risking automated discrimination.”

Throwback to when the Telangana misused voter data: “We already saw this script play out with the previous government’s illegal IPIH 360-degree surveillance system, which weaponised voter profiling and exclusion, and 20 lakh ration cards were deleted. Algorithmic weeding out without human recourse always penalises the poorest,” he said, referring to the government’s Integrated People Information Hub (IPIH), a centralized, 360-degree citizen profiling and surveillance database developed by the Hyderabad City Police and the Telangana State Police. 

Explore more here: How Telangana’s Real-Time AI Facial Recognition System Could Be Misusing Voter Data

Some questions to ponder upon: 

• What is the itemised list of all the “family-oriented” data that the state intends to collect? Because, according to the Aadhaar Act (2016), the demographic information “shall not include race, religion, caste, tribe, ethnicity, language, records of entitlement, income, or medical history.” Is this an attempt to go beyond Aadhaar-collected data and also to create an Aadhaar-like AI-based “360-degree beneficiary data”?
• Can the Telangana government use the data that it has already collected or is still collecting for Unified Card purposes? When data was originally collected for CMRF, or fees reimbursement, or the SEEEPC Survey, what was the stated purpose at the time? Can Telangana now lawfully repurpose the same data for this 360-degree unified profiling system without requiring a fresh consent or a new legal basis?
• How does the Telangana government intend to use AI in this process, especially for the proposed features like eliminating duplicates? Does the government intend to give decision-making functionality to the AI systems? Or will it be just limited to flagging the duplicates? What is the threshold for AI involvement?

Also Read: 

• Telangana police widen social media crackdown, target political opponents, journalists and critics
• Days after Hate Speech Bill, Hyderabad Police orders social media monitoring AI tool
• Explainer: Telangana Police Plan to Develop Surveillance Tools for Monitoring Private Messages and Online Content