Aadhaar likely to pass the money Bill test

The validity of the Aadhaar Act shall not be disturbed by the Supreme Court’s decision on the right to privacy case, say former government officials and legal experts. Neither would invoking the privacy clause automatically make the Act questionable because it was passed by Parliament as a money Bill, last year.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had come under fire for having used the cover of Finance Bill, 2016-17, to pass the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. Consequently it became a money Bill over which only the Lok Sabha had effective voting rights. The Rajya Sabha, where the government was in a minority then, could not stall the Act from coming into force.

C Raj Kumar, dean of the Jindal Global Law School at OP Jindal Global University, said there is no reason to revisit the passage of the Act. “Privacy issues are not germane here because the court has not questioned the validity of Aadhaar”. He said it is up to the government to decide if a law qualifies as a money Bill and for the courts to adjudicate on it. “This judgment will not change the environment for the courts”.

The Act offers a legal cover for the government to bring a host of services under the Aadhaar umbrella, which opponents claim violates the natural rights of a citizen.

In the course of Thursday’s judgment, the nine-judge Bench noted: “Natural rights are not bestowed by the state. They inhere in human beings because they are human. They exist equally in the individual, irrespective of class or strata, gender or orientation”.

But former joint secretary in the Budget division of the Union finance ministry, V Sivasubramanian, said the Aadhaar Act did not violate any natural rights. “The Aadhaar database just offers a yes or no answer to a query from any entity linked to it. It offers no additional data about an individual, and so issues of privacy have no relevance here.” According to the executive partner in Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan — an attorney firm — a court can question if the safeguards in the system are adequate to protect the data, but those are technological issues because of which the Act cannot be held ultra vires.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had come under fire for having used the cover of Finance Bill, 2016-17, to pass the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016