Aadhaar role limited to a few schemes

R. Balaji, TT, New Delhi, Aug. 11: The Supreme Court today directed the Centre not to link the Aadhaar card to any welfare scheme or transaction apart from its subsidised food grain, kerosene and cooking gas programmes.

The interim order, which will apply till a constitution bench decides on the Aadhaar scheme's constitutionality, allows the card to remain mandatory for the public distribution system and subsidised LPG for now.

However, the three-judge bench asked the Centre to widely publicise - through newspapers, radio and television - that it is not mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar card.

It also restrained the Centre from sharing any personal detail of any citizen, obtained during Aadhaar enrolment, with any "authority" or "persons" except when a court allows it to do so in connection with a criminal investigation.

Various central and state authorities had been insisting on Aadhaar cards in connection with myriad purposes such as rural job guarantee scheme enrolment, marriage registration, sale deeds, rental agreements or the booking of railway tickets. Today's order puts an end to this.

Attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi, however, dissuaded the court from stopping further enrolment under the Aadhaar scheme.

After passing the order, the bench of Justices J. Chelameshwar, S.A. Bobde and C. Nagappan referred to a constitution bench the larger question of whether the Aadhaar scheme flouts the "right of privacy", as alleged by a group of petitioners.

The constitution bench will decide whether privacy is a fundamental right and, if so, whether the Aadhaar scheme impinges on it.

Led by the former Karnataka High Court judge, Justice K.S. Puttaswamy, the petitioners have argued that Aadhaar violates privacy by securing biometric data like fingerprints and an iris scan, which can be misused.

One of their particular concerns has been the possibility of misuse by the private firms to whom the government has outsourced the collection of biometric details.

They have also cited how the scheme was launched through an executive order without legislative sanction.

The government has argued that Aadhaar alone can stop "bogus beneficiaries and ghost names" costing the exchequer Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore every year on food grain, cooking gas and kerosene subsidies and the rural job scheme.

The court today initially suggested stopping Aadhaar enrolments, but Rohatgi pleaded that the scheme had already covered 91 per cent of the country's adult population and 53 per cent of its minors.# He cited the absence of any public "uproar" against Aadhaar: "Only one or two persons (the petitioners) are before the court."

But Justice Chelameshwar shot back: "If there are one or two persons before this court, it does not matter. No constitutional issue is raised by the entire country."

Rohatgi pleaded that "there should have been some protests" for the scheme to come under the scanner.

"Not necessary," the bench observed. "If we apply that test to all the earlier judgments by this court, (they) should have been passed on such reasoning. It (an uproar) rarely happens. (An) uproar does not happen in the country every day."