New Delhi: The modification of the Supreme Court order on Aadhaar is pursuant to a batch of applications by the Centre, the Reserve Bank, Sebi, IRDA and several states to extend the benefits to all types of services, including benefits under social service and welfare schemes.
The bench said the question of extending the use of Aadhaar cards for all types of services will be decided by the Constitution Bench while considering if the right to privacy is a fundamental right or not, and whether the collection of biometric data like fingerprints and iris scans will violate the right to privacy.
The bench reiterated its earlier orders and said that no benefit or service shall be denied to anyone on account of non-possession of Aadhaar cards, and that no illegal migrants should be issued with these cards. It also directed the government to ensure wide publicity to the order that the possession of the Aadhaar card is not mandatory.
Attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi submitted that the right to privacy was not absolute and that the Aadhaar card in no way infringed on the right to privacy. He said about 92 crore people had already been issued Aadhaar cards and that this had enabled lakhs of fake ration card holders to be eliminated.
Strongly opposing modification of the court’s August 11 order, senior counsels Shayam Divan, Soli Sorabjee and Gopal Subramanium submitted that there were no safeguards or penalties and no legislative backing on obtaining personal information.
Speaking in Aizawl, Reserve Bank governor Raghuram Rajan welcomed the court’s ruling and said it would help in the financial inclusion drive and providing easy access to loans.
“The Supreme Court ruling will be quite helpful, making us use it in banking services,” Mr Rajan said.
Aadhaar in more areas allowed
Lifting its earlier restrictions, the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the wider usage of Aadhaar card to a limited extent, on a purely voluntary basis, to avail of benefits under MGNREGA, all types of pensions, the EPF and to open Jan Dhan Yojana zero balance bank accounts. This is in addition to LPG and PDS schemes, for which the SC had allowed the voluntary use of Aadhaar.
A five-judge Constitution Bench, comprising Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices M.Y. Eqbal, C. Nagappan, Arun Mishra and Amitav Roy, modified the August 11 interim order by a three-judge bench.
