New Delhi, Jan 2 (PTI) The government on Wednesday introduced an amendment bill in Lok Sabha to provide legal backing for voluntary seeding of biometric Aadhaar ID with mobile numbers and bank accounts after the Supreme Court barred mandatory use of the 12-digit unique identifier by private firms.

As the Oppositions raised concerns, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asserted that the proposed amendment is in compliance with the Supreme Court judgement and that there will be no infringement of privacy. He also said that the government has prepared a data protection bill and it will be introduced in Parliament soon.

"Let me clarify at the outset that the proposed amendment is done in compliance with the Supreme Court judgement. It (linking) is not mandatory at all," he said.

Regarding privacy issue, he said privacy is "not being invaded at all" from these amendments. The parallel authentication norm is there to safeguard privacy issues, he added. "We should not forget that Aadhaar has led to saving of Rs 90,000 crore" through Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT), the minister said, adding multilateral organisations such as World Bank and IMF have hailed Aadhaar as a unique innovation of India… (PTI)