By Kanu Sarda
Published: 22nd July 2015 03:07 AM
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday wondered as to how some state governments were insisting on Aadhaar card for the disbursal of benefits under the social welfare scheme, despite its earlier ruling barring the same.
A Bench of Justice J Chelameswar, Justice S A Bobde and C Nagappan voiced concern over the states acting in breach of the apex court’s interim order in this regard in September 2013.
At the outset, Justice Chelameswar pointed to the court’s earlier order asking the Central and state governments and their agencies not to link the disbursal of benefits under various social welfare schemes to the Aadhaar card.
At this, Attorney General (A-G) Mukul Rohatgi said, “We had asked not to insist on Aadhaar card for any official work.”
Meanwhile, the Centre told the court that it was difficult to roll back the scheme, which was integral to the government’s efforts to eradicate poverty, as it sought the hearing of petitions challenging the Aadhaar scheme by the Constitution Bench.
Rohatgi told the court that about Rs 5,000 crore had been spent on the Unique Identification Scheme and social welfare programmes and subsidy schemes were linked to the Aadhaar card.
Submitting that about 80 crore people in the country had been covered under the Aadhaar programme, he said scrapping of the scheme would adversely affect the government efforts to eradicate poverty.
“These are questions of huge importance. The nature of the queries raised and its impact on governance of this country is huge. The sweep is so large,” the A-G said and asked the apex court to refer the case to a five-judge Constitution Bench.
The Bench said it would on Wednesday hear the case on the issue of referring it to a larger Bench.
In its September 2013 order, the court had said, “No person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card, inspite 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 court was hearing a batch of petitions, including one by Karnataka High Court Justice (Retd) K S Puttaswamy, who had moved the court in 2012, contending that the entire Aadhaar scheme was unconstitutional as the biometric data collected under it was an incursion and transgression of individual privacy.