NEW DELHI, August 11, 2015
The Supreme Court on Tuesday referred to a Constitution Bench a batch of petitions seeking to declare the Aadhaar scheme as an intrusion into privacy.
Bench agrees with Centre that freezing Aadhaar registration at this point will do no good
Leaving the decision to sign up for Aadhaar entirely to citizens, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that “balance of interest” was better served if obtaining the unique identity number was made optional and not mandatory.
Hearing criticism that even newborn babies were made to register for Aadhaar, a three-judge Bench led by Justice J. Chelameswar, in an interim order, said Aadhaar was neither mandatory nor a condition for accessing benefits one was already entitled to.
In a series of directions, the Bench ordered the government to give wide publicity in the media that it was not mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar card. Secondly, it ordered that production of an Aadhaar card would not be a condition for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen.
Thirdly, it directed the government that an Aadhaar card would not be used for any purpose other than the PDS Scheme, particularly for distribution of foodgrains and cooking fuel such as kerosene. It should also be used for the LPG distribution scheme.