Civil society hails verdict, says it will give them freedom from 12digit tangle

NEW DELHI: Activists who fought against collection of biometric details of the residents for the 12- digit unique number A ad ha ar without any privacy protection welcomed the Supreme Court judgment making privacy a fundamental right.

The verdict was delivered on petitions against A ad ha ar by four persons, of whom three—Shanta Singh, Aruna Roy and Dr Major General SG Vombatke re—are associated with different civil society organisations. Retired Karnataka high court judge KS Put taswa my was the fourth petitioner. Their common contention was that Aadhaar violated one’s right to privacy derived from Article 21 of Constitution dealing with fundamental right to life.

All of them hailed the SC order as “historic” and expected the court to deliver a favourable verdict on the efficacy of Aadhaar law, which a three-member bench will now hear.

The activists claimed that a large number of poor had been excluded from welfare schemes due to deficiencies in the A ad ha ar scheme and cited specific instances in the apex court.

“We have many case studies in Rajasthan where the poor had been denied their monthly quota of ration as Aadhaar authentication failed as machines failed to read weak finger impressions,” said Roy, a Magsaysay awardee and a former member of National Advisory Council.

“The government has used Aadhaar to wrongly exclude many from the beneficiary list. And we have evidence for that.”

Usha Ramanathan, an Aadhaar critic, was happy that the unique identification( U ID) hearing was back on track and will conclude within the next few months. The first petition against Aadhaar was filed in 2012 but the case lingered as the government initially maintained that Aadhaar was voluntary.

Reetika Khera, development economist at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and anti-A adhaar campaigner, said the SC order was a victory for an ordinary Indian who wants his or her rights to be protected from an intrusive government.

I hope the SC order will free poor and deprived from the clutches of Aadhaar and ensure all poor get their entitlements under the different government schemes. SHANTA SINHA, activist