Aadhaar query on homeless

Homeless family in the streets of Old Delhi. Source: Shutterstock

R. Balaji, TT, Jan 10, 2018 New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stumped the Centre by wondering how it intends to issue Aadhaar cards to innumerable homeless persons in the country in the absence of a residential identity.

The court also wondered how the homeless could be given any national identity at all when they do not have any individual proof of residence.

"A person who is homeless, how will you give an Aadhaar card?" a bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta asked additional solicitor-general Tushar Mehta during a hearing on a petition on night shelters for the homeless, particularly during the winter.

Aadhaar was not mentioned in the PIL filed a decade ago by a social activist, E.R. Kumar, seeking night shelters for the destitute. Taken by surprise, Mehta could not come up with an immediate answer.

"A person who is homeless, how will he have an Aadhaar card? So far as the Union of the India (is concerned), these homeless persons do not exist?" Justice Lokur asked the law officer.

Mehta said that since the Aadhaar card enrolment was not the issue before the bench, he would prefer not to address the question. The bench asked advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner, for his views.

The counsel said the government claimed to have issued 90 crore Aadhaar cards but had not bothered to give the homeless any such identity. The constitutional validity of the Aadhaar card is pending before a five-judge constitution bench.

Justice Lokur's bench expressed dismay at the pace of construction of night shelters across the country despite a number of earlier directives by the court.