Supreme Court on Aadhaar: If ID with private party, why not with the government?

Justice A K Sikri told Shyam Divan, who was appearing for the petitioners, that “your argument seems to be that if I give my passbook, they will come to know my transactions. I don’t think that is the case.”

Picture for representational purpose. (File)

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked petitioners who have challenged the constitutional validity of Aadhaar what was their objection to sharing address proof with the government when they had no problem sharing it with private parties.

“If you need insurance, you go to a private party. If you need a phone, you go to a private party… If private player asks for address proof, it is okay. But if government asks the same, then (the argument is) it’s at the core of my identity,” Justice D Y Chandrachud, one of the five judges on the Constitution Bench, said. “If you apply for a job, the first thing they ask is your address proof, and salary is admitted to a private bank,” he said.

Justice A K Sikri told Shyam Divan, who was appearing for the petitioners, that “your argument seems to be that if I give my passbook, they will come to know my transactions. I don’t think that is the case.”

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Divan said there was a difference between sharing information with a private party known to one and an unknown one. “The question is: Can the State compel you to give your information to a private party which is totally out of control of UIDAI and is then free to put this to commercial use,” he said.

At this, Justice Chandrachud said the court would like to know what safeguards were put in place by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to protect personal data.

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Divan said the contention that enrolment for Aadhaar is voluntary becomes a purely academic exercise if people are required to provide it for all services. Referring to the introducer system — a person had to be introduced by a person already with Aadhaar — Divan said this was meant for people who did not have any identity since the government argument was that there were many who did not have any identity and Aadhaar was intended to help them.
But information accessed under the Right to Information, he said, showed that out of a total of 93 crore Aadhaar holders, only 219,096 Aadhaars were generated using the introducer system — this, he said, works out to only 0.0003 per cent.

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He said the petitioners’ concerns regarding integrity of information collected by private enrollers was validated by a statement by the government in Parliament and consequent action by UIDAI.

The statement made on April 10, 2017, said that in the last six years, the government had cancelled and blacklisted 34,000 operators who tried to pollute the system. Since December 2016, action had been taken against 1,000 operators, the statement added. But news reports of September 12, 2017, Divan said, stated that UIDAI had learnt of such contraventions by private enrollers and blacklisted 49,000 operators.

Ananthakrishnan G

Ananthakrishnan G. is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express. He has been in the field for over 23 years, kicking off his journalism career as a freelancer in the late nineties with bylines in The Hindu. A graduate in law, he practised in the District judiciary in Kerala for about two years before switching to journalism. His first permanent assignment was with The Press Trust of India in Delhi where he was assigned to cover the lower courts and various commissions of inquiry. He reported from the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India during his first stint with The Indian Express in 2005-2006. Currently, in his second stint with The Indian Express, he reports from the Supreme Court and writes on topics related to law and the administration of justice. Legal reporting is his forte though he has extensive experience in political and community reporting too, having spent a decade as Kerala state correspondent, The Times of India and The Telegraph. He is a stickler for facts and has several impactful stories to his credit. ... Read More

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