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Our Legal Correspondent
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| New Delhi: The Supreme Court is likely to take up next week a PIL challenging the Centre's decision to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for mobile phone connections and bank accounts. |
Kalyani Menon Sen, an author who has filed the plea through advocate Vipin Nair, has contended that making Aadhaar mandatory for the two services is unconstitutional as a nine-judge constitution bench ruled in August this year that the right to privacy is a fundamental right.
The petition challenges an amendment made in June this year to rules under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2005, making submission of Aadhaar numbers mandatory for "individual clients, companies, partnership firms and trusts" for a variety of purposes.
These include opening and maintaining bank accounts, making any financial transactions of and above Rs 50,000 and crediting foreign remittance into "small accounts". Non-compliance will render the bank accounts inoperational till the Aadhaar number is submitted.
The petition has also challenged a circular issued in March this year by the department of telecommunications making it mandatory for all mobile phone subscribers to link their numbers with Aadhaar.
According to Sen, the petitioner, the two changes violate provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.
"The impugned provision and circular is in conflict with the provisions of the act... Section 7 of the act limits the purposes for which authentication through the Aadhaar number is to be used to receipt of a subsidy, benefit or service, where the expenditure is incurred from, or the receipt is a part of, the Consolidated Fund of India," the PIL says.
"Services provided by public and private banks in operating bank accounts do not fall under any 'subsidy, benefit or service,' vide definitions laid down under the Aadhaar Act. Further, unlike Section 7, the impugned provision makes it mandatory for everyone to procure an Aadhaar number for opening and maintaining bank accounts," the petition adds.
According to the petitioner, the "wholesale collection of biometric data, including fingerprints, for Aadhaar and storing them in a central depository per se puts the State in an extremely dominant position in relation to the individual citizen".
"Biometric data belongs to the concerned individual and the State cannot collect or retain it to be used against the individual or to his or her prejudice in future. Further, the State cannot put itself in a position where it can track an individual and engage in surveillance," the petition says.
