Aadhaar valid but banks and telcos can no longer hold you to ransom

TT & PTI, New Delhi: The Supreme Court Wednesday upheld the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar scheme in a 4:1 majority verdict but limited its scope, ruling it cannot be made mandatory for bank accounts, mobile connections or school admissions.

The majority judgment held the Aadhaar Act did not violate individuals' right to privacy and cleared the use of Aadhaar for welfare schemes, income-tax returns and the allotment of the permanent account number (PAN).

It struck down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which allowed private entities like telecom companies to demand and use biometric Aadhaar data.

The majority judgment by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Khanwilkar and Ashok Bhushan also ruled that Aadhaar authentication data (collected by an entity from the central repository to verify a client's identity) cannot be stored for more than six months.

Justice D.Y. Chandrachud gave a dissenting judgment, quashing the Aadhaar Act as unconstitutional. He said the Aadhaar bill's passage as a money bill (bypassing the Rajya Sabha, where the government lacked a majority) amounted to a fraud on the Constitution.

Justice Chandrachud said it was now impossible to live in India without Aadhaar, which he said violated Article 14 (equality). He added that if Aadhaar got seeded with every database, there was a chance of infringement of the right to privacy.

But the majority verdict upheld the bill's passage as a money bill by the Lok Sabha. It observed that the Aadhaar scheme served the public interest by giving dignity to the marginalised sections and reach welfare benefits to them.

"Aadhaar gives dignity to the marginalised. Dignity to the marginalised outweighs privacy," Justice Sikri, who wrote the majority verdict for himself and Justices Misra and Khanwilkar, said. "One can't throw the baby out with the bathwater." But the 1,448-page judgement clarified that the Aadhaar would not be mandatory for opening bank accounts, securing school admissions, or taking exams like the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. Nor can the University Grants Commission seek it.

It said a robust data protection regime needed to be brought in place as early as possible, and directed the government not to give Aadhaar numbers to illegal immigrants.

The judgment quashed Section 33(2), which allows disclosure of individuals' Aadhaar data on the ground of national security provided an officer not below the rank of a joint secretary gives the direction.

Justice Bhushan, in his concurring judgment, held that revealing demographic information for Aadhaar did not violate the right to privacy, arguing an individual revealed such data for other ID proofs too.

Both the BJP and Opposition parties welcomed the judgment, which former attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi described as "balanced".

The Congress was happy that the Aadhaar scheme, a UPA brainchild, was retained while most of the "illegal distortions" had been thrown out.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra saw a victory for the "pro-poor Modi government", while finance minister Arun Jaitley called the judgment "historic".

A batch of 31 petitions, including one from former high court judge K.S. Puttaswamy, had challenged Aadhaar's constitutionality, portraying the scheme as an invasion of privacy and an excuse to snoop on citizens.