Chandigarh: Scores of journalists held demonstrations in Punjab and Chandigarh on Monday to protest against the UIDAI\u2019s move to register a case against The Tribune newspaper and one of its reporters for exposing illegal data leak of Aadhaar details. The protests were organised on behalf of the Chandigarh Press Club, the Punjab Press Club in Jalandhar, the Patiala Media Club and the Sangrur Press Club. Journalists in Chandigarh started their protest march from the Press Club and headed towards the Punjab Raj Bhawan to submit a memorandum to the state government and Union Territory Administrator V.P. Singh Badnore. Chandigarh Press Club Secretary General Barinder Singh Rawat condemned the FIR against the Tribune journalist. \u201cInstead of taking action against people involved in data breach, the government agency preferred to lodge a FIR against a reporter who exposed the loopholes in the system,\u201d Rawat said in a statement. Similar protests also took place in other places in Punjab and Haryana to show solidarity with the reporter and the newspaper. After a January 3 report by The Tribune over breach in Aadhaar data with a headline \u201cRs 500, 10 minutes, and you have access to billion Aadhaar details\u201d, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) registered an FIR against the newspaper and reporter Rachna Khaira. The FIR, lodged with the Cyber Cell of the Crime Branch, invokes serious charges under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), IT Act and Aadhaar Act. The UIDAI on January 4 said its search facility for grievance redressal may have been \u201cmisused\u201d but denied any breach or leak of Aadhaar data. The UIDAI move has attracted widespread criticism from press bodies, Editors Guild and journalists across the country who have demanded the withdrawal of cases against the newspaper and its reporter. The Tribune has stood by its story and rebutted claims made by the UIDAI. \u201cWe at The Tribune believe that our stories were in the nature of a legitimate journalistic exercise. \u201cOur story was in response to a very genuine concern among the citizens on a matter of great public interest,\u201d Tribune\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Harish Khare said in a note on the newspaper\u2019s website on Sunday. \u201cWe regret very much that the authorities have misconceived an honest journalistic enterprise and have proceeded to institute criminal proceedings against the whistleblower. \u201cWe shall explore all legal options open to us to defend our freedom to undertake serious investigative journalism,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chandigarh: Scores of journalists held demonstrations in Punjab and Chandigarh on Monday to protest against the UIDAI\u2019s move to register a case against The Tribune newspaper and one of its reporters for exposing illegal data leak of Aadhaar details. The protests were organised on behalf of the Chandigarh Press Club, the Punjab Press Club in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,318],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","category-tricity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17693,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17691\/revisions\/17693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}