‘Bodily integrity’ is sacrosanct
The attorney general’s defence of Aadhaar is bogus
Defending the Centre’s decision to link citizens’ Aadhaar numbers to their PAN cards, attorney general (A-G) Mukul Rohatgi on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the right over one’s body is not absolute and called the arguments of bodily integrity “bogus”. He added that Aadhaar biometrics are no more intrusive than photographs used in other identity documents and that an individual does not have absolute authority over their body because the government was already regulating abortions in women and collecting fingerprints from criminals. The A-G also argued that the leaks did not come from the central database and so the Aadhaar database cannot be called unsafe.
The argument that an individual’s bodily integrity is “bogus” is shocking. It undermines individual freedom and raises several disturbing questions including whether the next step could be DNA profiling. In cases involving violations of “bodily integrity” such as rape, the notion of consent is invoked. Consent implies that an individual has complete authority over their own body that no one can violate. By claiming this is “bogus”, the A-G has done a great disservice to the rights of citizens. The bedrock of the modern legal system is the assumption that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. But to collect biometric data because criminals surrender fingerprints is to turn that maxim on its head. As Justice AK Sikri pointed out, “The State has the obligation to maintain the dignity of an individual”. The argument that the government cannot be blamed for the leaks is a ‘bogus’ argument. Given that details of 135 million Aadhaar numbers may have been leaked, it matters little where that breach came from The fact remains that citizens have no way to ensure the safety of their information.
Aadhaar will also be connected to bank accounts and other deeply personal aspects of a person’s life. It would give the State massive powers over the individual. And given the rate at which the system is leaking, and the amount of scope there is for misuse of such information, Aadhaar is an invasive database that must not be made mandatory without checks and balances.