In an apology posted on Twitter, Sharma made a thinly veiled reference to the incident and admitted that he got frustrated by the “personal events and attacks” on iSPIRT’s reputation and “slipped”. 

iSPIRT, an independent think-tank for India’s software industry, helped the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) develop much of the initial Aadhaar infrastructure and ecosystem. 

What happened?

There have been multiple reports of data breaching through Aadhaar in different parts of the country that led to many on social media come out in criticism of UIDIA’s security system that potentially contains some major security loopholes. 

The criticism however did not go well with Sharma, who allegedly went on to create fake Twitter accounts to lash out at people maligning Aadhaar. Kiran Jonnalagadda, one of the founders of Internet Freedom Foundation, last week told The Wire that one of the many accounts that lambasted him post his criticism of Aadhaar belonged to Sharma. 

Social media war

To prove his claim, Jonnalagadda uploaded a video showing that a certain @Confident_India Twitter handle could be traced back to Sharma’s personal mobile phone number on Twitter, triggering a social media war between iSPIRT and Aadhaar campaigners. 

Sharma had also replied to one of the tweets saying he had nothing to do with the account in question and was accompanying a family member on US East coast “for a serious medical situation”. 

Sharma, in his apology, also states that he finally found the time to reflect on the incident when he was on his flight back from the US after attending to the family medical emergency. 

(Feature image source: Facebook)