India court upholds legality of world’s largest biometric database
NEW DELHI: India’s top court has upheld the legality of the government’s Aadhaar national identity project, the world’s largest biometric database, but imposed new restrictions on how the personal details of more than one billion citizens can be used.
The ruling by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court yesterday draws a line under many years of legal challenges from critics, who said Aadhaar threatened individual privacy and risked turning the world’s secondmost populous nation into a surveillance state.
The government had insisted that Aadhaar, which issues every Indian with a unique 12-digit ID linked to fingerprints and iris scans, would streamline welfare services and root out fraud.
It was also pitched as a transparent way to ensure that government handouts of food, fuel and other essentials to India’s poorest were not siphoned off by corrupt middlemen, a huge problem in the country of 1.25 billion.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the scheme, saying the benefits far outweighed any risks.
The judges ruled that anybody drawing on government services – from filing tax returns to accessing pensions or welfare – would by law require an Aadhaar number.
But the bench said corporations could not insist that Indians provide their unique ID to register for services such as phone numbers – a key complaint from privacy advocates who say Aadhaar had gone too far.
The court, in its landmark ruling, also said children would not need Aadhaar to enrol in school since a right to education was fundamental to all Indians.