Draft data protection bill: Would have been better had report come out earlier, say Aadhaar petitioners

Petitioners who had challenged the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act Friday said it would have been better if the Sri Krishna Committee report on data protection had come out earlier.

Draft data protection: Would have been better had report come out earlier, say Aadhaar petitioners

Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar had raised the issue of informational privacy (Express Photo/Amit Mehra/File)

Petitioners who had challenged the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act Friday said it would have been better if the Sri Krishna Committee report on data protection had come out earlier. Senior advocate Sajan Povayyya, who represented Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said he had not seen the report. He added that he however would have been happier if it had come before the GDPR in Europe. “We must remember the GDPR is in force now. So, however good or bad it may be or however structured the proposed law may be, we are going to have troubles if it doesn’t inter operate with GDPR and US data policies,” Povayyya said.

Chandrasekhar had raised the issue of informational privacy. “The Data Protection Report and the Data Protection Act should have preceded the Aadhaar Act,” said Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, who represented the Centre for Civil Society which intervened in the case in support of Aadhaar but had reservations on its mandatory nature. “Anyway we are happy that we have this report and will go into it in detail,” he added.

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Another petitioner said that various parties, including the court and the government, would have had the benefit of the committee’s insight if the report had come out earlier.

On May 10, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the 2016 Aadhaar Act, after a marathon hearing lasting 38 days over a period of four months. A five-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan began hearing the matter on January 17.

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In concluding remarks, Attorney General K K Venugopal said this was the second longest oral hearing in the history of the Supreme Court.

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Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Gopal Subramanium took the stand that if the Act was struck down, the current database of user details should be destroyed and those who suffered due to failure of authentication should be paid damages. Petitioners have contended that Aadhaar compromises the fundamental right to privacy and undermines the dignity of an individual.

Defending Aadhaar, the government said it will help curb black money which was feeding terror and other anti-national activities and also ensure that subsidies under social welfare scheme reach the deserving and are not pilfered.

The government said it had saved thousands of crores of rupees after linking Aadhaar to social welfare schemes.

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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