SPECIAL REPORT The Supreme Court has directed the Government of India to withdraw all orders, which make the Aadhaar card mandatory for availing any service. The court has also directed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) not to share any information pertaining to an Aadhaar card holder with any government agency without the prior permission of the card holder.
This comes as a big jolt to the government which had earlier made Aadhaar mandatory for availing various services and planned to extend it to other welfare schemes run by the government. UPA touted Aadhaar as a big project but now it appears the whole scheme was flawed from the very beginning and tax payers’ money was wasted on a projected that fails to pass the legal scrutiny. The project which was expected to be help prop up security of the country is now facing flak for compromising security of the nation.
A total of 576.16 million Aadhaar cards had been issued till January 31. About Rs. 3,813.17 crore have already been spent on Aadhaar scheme from beginning (January-2009) till December 2013.
Government of India touted it as a flagship programme to allow every Indian to avail benefits of various schemes run by the government. Aadhaar--12 digit individual number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the Government of India--is expected to establish an individual's identity to public and private agencies across the country. Government tried to make Aadhaar mandatory for availing benefits of the welfare schemes so as to force people to enrol for Aadhaar.
But, now Supreme Court has directed Centre to withdraw all orders making Aadhaar mandatory for government service. Aadhaar provides a universal identity infrastructure which can be used by any identity-based application (like ration card, passport, etc.)
Aadhaar identifies individuals uniquely on the basis of their demographic information and biometrics gives individuals the means to clearly establish their identity to public and private agencies across the country. Government claimed that it will create an opportunity to address the existing limitations in financial inclusion. The Aadhaar can help poor residents easily establish their identity to banks. As a result, banks will be able to scale up their branch-less banking deployments and reach out to a wider population at lower cost.
Supreme Court passed the order on Monday while hearing the petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of Aadhaar card with those opposing the mega project saying it was not backed by any statute and compromises national security.
Further, a three-judge bench headed by Justice BS Chauhan was also told that the project not only violates the right to privacy but the "biometrics", which is the foundation of the project, is an unreliable and untested technology and public funds are being channelled to private enterprises without sufficient validation.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan had argued that "there is no statute to back the project" and even if there were one, the statute would be violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution as the project enables surveillance of individuals and impinges upon right to human dignity.
The petitioners said that the procedure adopted by UIDAI in collecting data was also violative of Article 21 as individuals are not told about crucial aspects such as potential misuse of the information, the absence of any statutory protection, commercial value of the information and that private parties are involved in collecting biometric information without safeguards.
Last year, the government faced flak after making Aadhaar mandatory for its ambitious programme of transferring cooking gas subsidy directly to beneficiaries in certain districts.
The Supreme Court ruled that Aadhar cards are not mandatory even as various state governments insist on making it compulsory for a range of formalities, including marriage registration, disbursal of salaries and provident fund among other public services.
Aadhaar was made mandatory for several government scheme. Direct Cash Transfer scheme made it mandatory to have Aadhaar card. Plans were also being made to integrate issue of ration cards and passports also to individual Aadhaar numbers. In December 2012, five Indian banks had launched an instant prepaid card service called the Saral money service allowing users to open a bank account using their Aadhaar card for know your customer (KYC) validation. UIDAI has further partnered with 15 more banks to use Aadhaar as KYC validation.
Subsidy transfers like educations loans, scholarship, MNREGA payment, old age pension, PDS subsidies, LPG subsidies, Indian Awass Yojna susbsidies and fertilizer subsidies were all to be transferred using Aadhaar number.
In October 2012, the government had launched Aadhaar enabled service delivery platform for citizens to access services of various government schemes such as wage payments, payment of social security benefits such as old-age payments, among others. In the same month, Vodafone had also launched a pilot project in Hyderabad using Aadhaar to verify and activate new prepaid and post paid connections.
There have been concerns that information on Indian citizens can be misused by foreign agencies and this could pose a serious threat to national security. Further, it is being alleged that foreign agencies are also involved with the Aadhaar project and sensitive date can be put to misuse.
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