The unique identity (UID) programme has run into another legal hurdle with the Supreme Court refusing immediate relief to several applicants who sought the extension of the use of the Aadhaar card for purposes beyond availing just social security benefits on a voluntary basis.
With the applications of the RBI, stock market regulator Sebi, telecom authority Trai and several states being bundled with the main arguments over the right to privacy before a Constitution Bench, it may be quite some time before the Aadhaar card can become a kind of single national identity proof.
Regardless of the larger issue of the primacy of the right to privacy of all citizens, whether poor or illiterate, or both, the legal tangle must be considered a setback for a scheme that showed some promise of cutting the Gordian knot in the process of identifying all the 1.25 billion Indians.
Heated exchanges during the court proceedings give an indication of the import of the right to privacy. The argument over why the court should come in the way if people are prepared to forego their right to privacy to avail of a larger benefit is not strong enough to defeat the principle of the right to privacy. The slowness of the justice system in this particular case can be self-defeating because people are still confused about the status of the Aadhaar card.
A quick decision, either way, would help 92 crore people have already availed of the card and the need for a national identity card is not to be brushed aside as a hobby horse of the bureaucracy.
