Supreme Court refuses to modify its order on use of Aadhaar card
By Samanwaya Rautray, ET Bureau | 8 Oct, 2015, 02.50AM IST
NEW DELHI: In a severe embarrassment for the Modi government, the Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to immediately concede its demand for the wider use of Aadhaar as proof of identity by banks, the stock markets and phone companies. Instead, the court referred the government's plea to a larger bench that will examine whether the mandatory nature of the scheme and its intrusive aspects encroach upon a citizen's right to privacy.
Several petitions had been filed challenging the use of the Aadhaar individual identification number and the top court had in the first instance reluctantly permitted the government to use it to dole out subsidies for cooking gas, kerosene and food grains sold through the public distribution system. The Modi government, which had vehemently opposed the previous UPA regime's ambitious scheme, changed its stance after coming to power in 2014 and insisted that Aadhaar was essential to target subsid for the deserving and prevent leakages worth thousands of crores of rupees.
A bench comprising Justices Jasti Chelameswar, SA Bobde and C Nagappan had initially directed the government not to insist on Aadhaar or deny social welfare benefits to the weaker sections for the lack of this proof of identity after the attorney general clarified that the scheme was "voluntary" and not "mandatory." Since then, the government prevailed over the court to let it use Aadhaar to hand out LPG, kerosene and PDS subsidies. The latest attempt was to get the top court to allow the use Aadhaar by banks, stock exchanges and phone companies to curb financial irregularities, black money and terrorism.
The three-judge bench on Wednesday rejected this plea for now and referred it to a larger bench. However, with several matters involving complicated constitutional questions of law — at last count over 150 — pending in the top court for final hearing, a fresh hearing on the plea to expand the use of Aadhaar may take time unless the government raises the issue again before the Chief Justice of India and urges him to constitute a larger bench immediately.
"We are of the view that these applications should be placed before the larger bench," the bench said in a short order. On Tuesday, regulatory bodies such as the Reserve Bank of India, the Securities & Exchange Board of India and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had spearheaded the government attempts to allow them to insist on Aadhaar. Also backing their case was the newly created Pension Regulatory Authority of India.
The top court heard their arguments patiently and then hinted that this was not a foolproof method of dealing with such problems. "How can you control terrorism?" the bench wondered when additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta stated that a terrorist would not get an Aadhaar number and therefore would not get a mobile phone connection.
The government had also insisted that black money and other financial irregularities could be tracked with the use of Aadhaar.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had defended the scheme in court, insisting that no personal information collected from citizens would be shared with anyone except government agencies.
He had also ruled out the possibility of such information being leaked to foreign agencies contracted by the Unique Identification Authority of India to collect such biometric data.
So far, 92 crore people have enrolled in the scheme, the government said.
Opponents of Aadhaar have objected to implementation of such an intrusive scheme by executive fiat and have demanded that the government bring in a law with adequate safeguards to prevent the leak and misuse of sensitive information collected from the citizens.
The government maintains that it has gone too far down the road to roll it back.
Read more at:
