Aadhaar hearing in Supreme Court: Here is what has happened so far

Beginning its hearing, the Supreme Court on January 17 questioned the petitioner’s contention that collection of personal data under the Aadhaar scheme could lead to totalitarianism. To this, Justice Chandrachud said an individual should not have an objection to the state using their personal data to check if the person had paid their taxes. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal responded that citizens did not know how their personal information was being used by the government.

The Supreme Court has said issues such as denial of benefits to citizens for either want of Aadhaar or due to its non-authentication may not be a ground for holding the law as “unconstitutional”. The court made the observation while declining to pass any interim order on a plea of the West Bengal government that the citizens should not be excluded and denied social benefits for want of Aadhaar or due to its non-authentication.

The Supreme Court has asked the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) not to make Aadhaar number mandatory for students who wanted to register for the National Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test (NEET) and other all-India examinations. The bench accepted the Centre’s contention that students may instead submit their passport, driving licence, bank account, Voters identity or ration card as proof of identity.

Claiming that Aadhaar impinged on his religious beliefs and was against the tenets of the Bible, a Christian man has sought exemption from applying for the UID from the Supreme Court, becoming the first person in the country to do so. In his petition, before a five-judge Constitution bench hearing the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act, petitioner John Abraham said: “It is clear that it is impossible for a person to go about their everyday lives without having an Aadhaar. Further, it is a biometric ID…This is similar to the warning issued in the Book of Revelation. Various interpretations of the book note that the ‘beast’ is symbolic of modern day political power. The Book, at Chapter 14, warns that anyone who receives such a number will face dire consequences.”

The Supreme Court pointed out that the Aadhaar Act left it open as to what “biological attributes” of an individual could be added as biometric information and asked the Centre whether this would amount to a case of “excessive delegation” of power. Attorney general Venugopal replied that it could be tested in courts whenever such additions were made and the regulations would be placed before Parliament under Section 55 of the Act.

While replying to the petitioners’ contention that insisting Aadhaar from everyone for everything made people feel all of them were being treated with suspicion, the UIDAI said seeding Aadhaar with PAN and bank accounts and other facilities would help authorities in effectively dealing with the global threat of money laundering. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with UIDAI and said only due diligence by banks while giving loans would curb the menace of Non Performing Assets.

The Supreme Court rebutted the Centre’s defence that collection of biometric details had not infringed the right to privacy of the citizens even if these were collected before the enactment of a law on Aadhaar in 2016. Referring to two earlier apex court verdicts – M P Sharma (1950) and Kharak Singh (1962) cases – where the SC had held right to privacy was not a fundamental right, Attorney General K K Venugopal said the Centre and the UIDAI had not violated privacy rights while collecting biometric details between 2010 and 2016, when there was no law.

On April 24, the Supreme Court has asked the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) why it needed to collect ‘metadata’ of personal transactions of citizens which go for Aadhaar authentication to avail services and benefits. Metadata is a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. The UIDAI, however, said it collected “limited technical metadata” to have control over the requesting entities (REs) which seek Aadhaar authentication for granting services and benefits.