How can bank a/c be frozen if there is no Aadhaar: SC

Mehta argued that the purpose behind linkage was to weed out fictitious bank accounts and stop money laundering.

“But the effect is being felt across the board, even to the 99% who are not into money laundering,” Justice Sikri replied.

The deadline for the linking of bank accounts with Aadhaar numbers was extended till the time the court reached a verdict in the case.

Later, when senior counsel Rakesh Diwedi, appearing for Gujarat government, was explaining the rationale of collecting Aadhaar data, Justice Chandrachud said that in the absence of a robust data protection law it is difficult to stop commercial surveillance and the sharing of information.

“When we mean surveillance, it is not real or physical surveillance but commercial surveillance,” the judge said.

He cited the instance of the Cambridge Analytica data mining scandal and said: “Today all information in Whatsapp or Facebook is commercially sensitive. Why should somebody intrude on my privacy and keep a tab over the conversation when I share a message with my wife? Our concern is that it will affect a vast number of population and the future generation and how are we going to lay down a law.”

The Chief Justice of India asked Dwivedi to explain on April 17 how the Aadhar data will be protected.