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CONSTITUTIONAL SC upholds validity of Aadhaar for govt welfare schemes; Aadhaar not necessary for banking, mobile services, rules fivejudge bench

NEWDELHI: A majority judgment of a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, but restricted its use to government welfare schemes funded by the Consolidated Fund of India, in a verdict that the government and the Opposition immediately owned.

The judgment, however, scrapped, wrote down, or amended key clauses in the UIDAI Act to protect the rights of individuals and prevent misuse of their details, ensuring a partial victory for petitioners.

Bank accounts and mobile phone numbers now no longer need to be linked to Aadhaar; and transaction details will now only be kept for six months, as against five years as the law originally mandated.

Both the majority and the minority judgments also said decisions of the Speaker could be reviewed judicially, a response to one petition against the government’s definition of the UIDAI bill as a money bill, thereby ensuring that it needed to be passed only by the Lok Sabha, where the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has a majority.

The majority judgment, however, refused to overturn the government’s decision to define this bill as a money bill.

The five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra in a 4:1 verdict also added that children cannot be denied school admissions for want for Aadhaar, and asked for ways to deal with exclusions, but said the number would be required for filing income-tax returns, making it necessary to link it with PAN cards.

Justice AK Sikri, who authored the main verdict on behalf of CJI Misra and justice AM Khanwilkar, held: “The whole architecture of Aadhaar is devised to give unique identity to the citizens of this country.”

Human dignity, he said, is to be treated as a fundamental right and the scheme envisaged under Aadhaar ensures dignity to the marginalised sections of society.

“This facet of dignity cannot be lost sight of and needs to be acknowledged,” he said.

The court also struck down section 57 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, that permitted corporate entities such as telecom companies to avail biometric Aadhaar data. Such a provision had no rationale nexus to the objective of the law, the court said.

Union law and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in an interview that the telecom and finance ministries would work with banks and telcos to ensure they erased the data of those who have already completed the linkages.

However, the law minister also left a window open for the government and said its understanding was that it could, with legislative backing, insist on such linkages.