Synopsis
The Supreme Court today directed the Centre to immediately withdraw the instruction, if any, issued by it for making Aadhaar card mandatory for citizens to avail government services.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ordered the government to withdraw all notifications that make Aadhaar cards mandatory for availing social security benefits, dealing a fresh blow to UPA's showpiece project that was conceived to plug leaks in the system of subsidy payments.
But in what will provide some succour to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the body until recently headed by Nandan Nilekani and now headless after the former Infosys boss stepped down to contest Lok Sabha elections, the top court on Monday also acceded to its request to not have to share biometric data collected by it with other government agencies or authorities. A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice BS Chauhan and Justice J Chelameshwar ordered the immediate delinking of Aadhaar cards and social security payments.
The apex court bench noted that no citizen could be deprived of any benefit for lack of an Aadhaar card if he was otherwise eligible for it. "We had already passed orders saying no one should suffer for not having an Aadhaar card… How can you insist on Aadhaar card? If there are any instructions that Aadhaar is mandatory, they should be withdrawn immediately," Justice Chelameshwar said.
The court's order came on a bad day for Aadhaar. Investigative portal Cobrapost.com ran a sting that showed these cards could be obtained for a price by people otherwise ineligible to have them. Aadhaar, which was conceived by UPA in 2009 to help ensure that cash payments and subsidies can be accessed by the really needy, has already been under attack for some time now from political parties.
The top court had last September asked the government to refrain from insisting on Aadhaar cards for dispensing social security benefits. But on Monday, the judges said they had received several complaints that the authorities were insisting on it. "I have received a lot of letters which say that Aadhaar card is mandatory despite court orders. One letter said a girl's marriage is not registered because of lack of an Aadhaar card. Other letters say authorities are not registering properties without Aadhaar cards," Justice Chauhan told Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran.
Parasaran, who was defending the legality of the Aadhaar programme on behalf of the government, assured the top court that the Centre would immediately take the necessary steps on this. The bench also restrained UIDAI from sharing biometric or any other data collected by it without consent from Aadhaar card-holders, effectively shutting the option for law enforcement agencies to use biometric information such as fingerprints and iris identification collected for issue of Aadhaar cards in criminal investigations. It also restrained other authorities from accessing the data currently with UIDAI.
The top court was acting on an appeal filed by UIDAI against a Bombay High Court order, which had directed forensics specialists to run fingerprints obtained in a case relating to the gangrape of a seven-year-old girl through the authority's database for a possible match.
In its plea against the high court order, UIDAI expressed the fear that the high court order would set a bad precedent and open the "floodgates of similar requests by various investigative agencies/police calling for information, including biometrics of residents for the purpose of investigation". "Sixty crore residents have enrolled themselves for Aadhaar card by providing their demographic and biometric information for civilian application only and sharing the data would endanger the fundamental rights of the citizens… Biometric data cannot be shared without the consent of the resident and as per its current data-sharing policy and guidelines. The right to privacy is one of the basic human rights of an individual and UIDAI is committed to protect this aspect," it said.
Opinion on the top court's orders were mixed. Aadhaar's architect Nilekani said the top court had upheld the principle of data privacy. "Happy to learn that the Hon'ble Supreme Court has upheld the principle of data privacy that UIDAI has emphasised for #Aadhaar all along!" he said in a tweet. Sunil Abraham, executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society, said the Supreme Court had risen to the occasion and upheld the human rights of citizens. "It (the court's order) shows the court has listened to both sides," he said.
Among legal experts, opinion was mixed. Senior advocate CS Vaidyanathan questioned the logic of disallowing use of such biometric information in criminal investigations. "The whole object is lost then. The logic of allowing use of such data only with consent of a person is not rational in today's context. It is the only way in which law and order can be preserved in a billion-plus society," he said.
But his peer and senior advocate Raju Ramachandran said the court order struck a fine balance between privacy and other societal needs. "But it also raises interesting issues such as whether such data can be used without consent of individual in criminal cases. When does the right of an individual to privacy end and the right of bigger demands of civil society take precedence?" he wondered.