Retired Justice B.N. Srikrishna to chair ID verification firm Equal’s advisory board

Retired Justice B. N. Srikrishna to chair Equal's Advisory Board for ID verification and data sharing platform.

Retired Supreme Court justice B. N. Srikrishna will chair the ID verification and data sharing platform Equal’s newly formed Advisory Board. Equal provides identity authentication services for large firms, boasting digital integrations with several ID providers.

The appointment comes as the government finalises the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, to implement the DPDP Act, 2023. 

Justice Srikrishna was the chair of the first committee formed by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to formulate a data protection law. That committee’s report, submitted in 2018, was eventually not taken up. Justice Srikrishna has also served in various finance-focused roles; he has headed the Sixth Pay Commission, chaired the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission, and also led the Expert Committee on Arbitration Law to propose reforms to the Arbitration & Conciliation Act, 1996.

The advisory board for Equal will also counsel the account aggregator OneMoney. Account aggregators are firms that provide Indians with a consolidated view of their financial data, a key digitisation priority for the government. 

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The commitment of two firms enable “secure, compliant and consent-driven data sharing aligns closely with my work in safeguarding privacy and fostering trust in technology based democratization of products and services,” Justice Srikrishna said in a statement provided by Equal. “Together, we aim to create frameworks that not only drive innovation but also set global benchmarks for ethical data usage and business practices.”

The advisory board includes retired central bankers and bureaucrats who have been key in establishing and maintaining key digitisation priorities: the appointees include Jagdish Capoor, Rakesh Mohan and Anand Sinha, who have all served as Deputy Governor at the RBI; J. Satyanarayana and Ajay Prakash Sawhney, who have served as CEOs of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which administers Aadhaar; and P.H. Ravikumar, the founding CEO of the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).