Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Aadhaar survives a fierce legal challenge' that was published in Newsband

Aadhaar survives a fierce legal challenge

The Aadhaar project has survived a fierce legal challenge. The government has staved off the challenge by successfully arguing that it is essentially a transformative scheme primarily aimed at reaching benefits and subsidies to the poor and the marginalised. Four of the five judges on a Constitution Bench ruled that the law enabling the implementation of the programme does not violate the right to privacy of citizens; instead, the project empowers marginalised sections and procures dignity for them along with services, benefits and subsidies by leveraging the power of technology.

In upholding Aadhaar, the majority opinion was not oblivious to the impact of disbanding a project that has already completed much ground. The majority favoured the scheme’s continuance for the sake of the 99.76% of people included under it, rather than fret over the 0.24% who were excluded because of authentication failure. “The remedy is to plug the loopholes rather than axe the project,” the Bench said.

In Switzerland, and a few other countries, people have voted for security and safety and adherence to law over the need for privacy. Today in India, we have Benami property owners cornering all resources denying the others equal right to opportunity to lead a normal life. The benami operators are everywhere including, politicians, lawyers, businessmen, professionals and judiciary. If the government guarantees, through the use of Aadhaar, to identify these people and to act against one and all, Indian people will also vote for making aadhaar mandatory.

India has a problem in establishing the identity of its citizens. Unlike other countries there is no unique identify that is offered to every citizen to ensure that the security of the state is not compromised. This has resulted in some of the most bizarre schemes where the citizens in the far eastern region have been forced to prove their identity. You are a criminal unless proven otherwise! The onus of proving that someone is not a citizen of this country rests on the State not on the individual.

It is time we establish a national scheme where anyone who is residing within our geological boundary is offered an identity that will enable him/her to be a citizen of this country. The Aadhar could play this role if properly supervised by an independent agency.

There are no easy choices when it comes to drawing the line between privacy and the right of the State to know. The common problem when this shows up is in matters of national security. However we are looking at this issue in matters related to the welfare of the downtrodden and controlling the fraud that is going on in this area. Here the intention of the State is paramount. The Supreme Court has put its faith on the intent of the State machinery that the scheme will be put to proper use. Considering how things are moving today, it is not clear whether their hopes will be justified.

To plug leakages in subsidy schemes and to have better targeting of welfare benefits was not the intent of the UPA government when the scheme was announced in 2009. That was what the present NDA government innovatively decided to use Aadhar for. Making Aadhar non-mandatory for subscribers to banking and telecom services is a retrograde step. Similarly, for admission of children to schools. We have seen many instances when Aadhar has helped nab terrorists and restore missing children to their parents. Like immunization being mandatory these days, obtaining Aadhar must also be made mandatory for new-born children. With increasing crime rates and identity thefts, Aadhar would go a long way in eliminating crimes. Of course, a comprehensive data privacy law along with its strict implementation must be welcomed because this country is notorious for data leakage.

Aadhaar or any other Id (Passport, Driving license, Voter Id, Ration Card, Pan Card) - All services issues by any government agency should be made online verifiable by various with good back end IT infrastructure and maintenance. Companies and various security points (like airports) need to get identity verified in a fast and easy way in today's world.

Make a provision in the next budget so that all state issued and central issued ID's can be brought online in next 6 months (with good inter connectivity between the backend servers that can communicate seamlessly for this purpose). As long information is kept in silos and not allowed to interact or cross-correlate, there is no worry that this will result in government surveillance.