Surabhi Agwarwal | New Delhi October 1, 2013 Last Updated at 19:59 IST
Pulls out past Supreme Court orders that run contrary to the latest one, UID Bill in Cabinet this week
Soon after the rap from the Supreme Court, the government has got into fire-fighting mode to solve the crisis over the Unique Identity (UID) or Aadhaar project. According to several government officials aware of the matter, the government is preparing a water-tight case in order to justify the need for Aadhaar as it readies a request for modification of the Supreme Court order.
The National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010, which will provide a legal backing to the initiative, is also being pushed hard -- with the Cabinet likely to take up the bill for discussion this week. Last week, Supreme Court had said in a directive that enrolling in the project couldn’t be made a condition to access government services or subsidies.
This has adversely impacted the ongoing direct benefits transfer initiative of the government with several departments such as the ministry of petroleum seeking a legal view of whether to carry out with a scheme that transfers cooking gas subsidy directly to the Aadhaar linked bank accounts of beneficiaries.
The Bill – which was sent back by the Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by BJP leader Yashwant Sinha – will be cleared by the Cabinet first and is expected to be tabled during the winter session of the Parliament.
In order to prepare its ground well before approaching the Supreme Court, the government has also pulled out two significant Supreme Court orders which have recommended the use of Aadhaar in the past for accessing government services such as the Public Distribution System (PDS).
“Other departments which have been using Aadhaar for subsidy payments under them are also being requested to provide data on how the linkage has helped them remove fakes and duplicates from the system,” said a government official who did not wish to be identified. The person also said that since the Supreme Court highlighted the issue of enrolling illegal migrants, data is being readied to show that a miniscule -- 0.2% of people are enrolled without any documents under the introducer system under the project.
In an order passed in September 2011 in the matter between People’s Union For Civil Liberties and Union of India, a committee under retired Justice D.P. Wadhwa recommended that electronic authentication of delivery and payments under the PDS should be done through online Aadhaar in order to reform the system.
“States/UTs maybe encouraged to include the PDS related KYR+ field in the date collection exercise being undertaken by various Registrars across the country as part of the UID (Aadhaar) enrolment,” it said. In the second order dealing with the issue of bogus admissions in government schools, the court gave a direction to the Education Department of Kerala “to issue UID card to all the school children” to determine the number of actual students in the school.
Business Standard has reviewed copies of both these orders
On Monday last week, the Supreme Court had said in an order that “No person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory and when any person applies to get the Aadhaar card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant.” The order has raised concerns about the way forward for the direct benefits transfer scheme. It is a bigger cause of worry for governments such as that of Delhi that are about to go to the polls soon and have mandated the use of Aadhaar for many government services such as marriage and property registration.
The government is also trying to rope in other user agencies to argue in favour of Aadhaar. "Ideally looking, why should the UID Authority of India argue in favour of Aadhaar being made mandatory, departments such as a LPG who are using it present the number to their benefit should be given a chance to present their case in front of the Court," said another official who also did not wish to be named.
UIDAI has enrolled almost 50 crore residents so far and has a target of giving the UID number to 60 crore people by 2014.