In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

12961 - Aadhaar hearings: Day 15 saw arguments on Aadhaar as a money bill, interim orders for NEET registrations were also passed - First Post

Aadhaar hearings: Day 15 saw arguments on Aadhaar as a money bill, interim orders for NEET registrations were also passed

Mar 08, 2018 12:53 PM IST


On Day 15 of the Aadhaar hearings, senior counsel Arvind Datar concluded his arguments for the petitioners, and senior counsel and former minister P Chidambaram commenced his. The main arguments revolved around Aadhaar as a money bill. A range of other issues were also raised, including the validity of Sections 57 and 7 of the Aadhaar Act, an excessive delegation under the Act and that the ‘foolproof’ Aadhaar-PAN linkage could be circumvented merely by entering 12 zeros in the Income Tax return forms.

The Court also passed interim orders allowing alternate identifications such as driving license, ration cards, etc., for registration for NEET and other entrance examinations. In addition, the Court said that it would address the issue of extending the 31 March deadline on a conclusion of P Chidambaram’s arguments.

Consent for Aadhaar is not ‘free’
Datar started his arguments for the day on the issue of consent, arguing that asking people to either consent or risk having their bank accounts blocked, was not consent at all. In such a situation, there could neither be consent’ nor free consent’ as per the Indian Contract Act. This is more so when one party has a position of dominance over the other. This, in effect, vitiates the ‘consent’ taken from the people for Aadhaar.

Private party use of Aadhaar removes money bill nexus
Commencing the argument on the Aadhaar Act as a money bill, it was argued that the use of Aadhaar was bound by its Statement of Objects, which refers to the ‘delivery of subsidies, benefits and services, the expenditure for which is incurred from the Consolidated Fund of India’. If the Aadhaar Act is upheld, then the uses to which it can be put should not extend beyond that outlined in these objects.

The arguments then returned to Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, the section which permits anyone, including private parties to use Aadhaar, and which has widely been used as the basis for making Aadhaar mandatory for various purposes. The Bench, here, observed that another key issue was that the minute private parties were involved, the Act’s nexus with a money bill is lost.

Rajya Sabha recommendations for deletion of Section 57
The Rajya Sabha, it must be remembered, had in fact recommended the deletion of this section at the time of deliberating the Aadhaar Bill in parliament. The rejection of these recommendations was also pointed to by the petitioners. In particular, the fact that had Aadhaar not been a money bill, then the Lok Sabha would have been forced to pay heed to the Rajya Sabha recommendations, including the deletion of Section 57 as well as to provide an opt-out clause.

Aadhaar as a universal identifier like  the SSN
To bring out the issue with the near-universal use of Aadhaar, the adoption and subsequent rejection of the Social Security Number (SSN) as a de facto standard universal identifier in the US was also raised. A US governmental report on Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens’, which had criticised the use of SSN as such was quoted. It is important to note that this report was used in debates that happened in the US Senate back in 1974. This report had also said that an individual will be entitled to refuse to show his SSN number, and it would be unlawful for any federal agency to deny the provision of any benefit the individual is entitled to for this reason.

This was compared to the use of Aadhaar today.  It was argued that today, it was not possible for an individual to survive without Aadhaar, and it was needed from ‘birth to death’. It was further argued that worldwide, there was a turn towards limiting the use of data while here, the opposite was happening.

In view of this, it was argued that Section 57 allowing the use of Aadhaar for ‘any purpose’ could not be interpreted to mean use for ‘all purposes’. The Bench, here, also questioned if there was any compelling state interest in authorising private parties to mandate Aadhaar. Further, previous arguments on Section 57 as an excessive delegation of essential functions were reiterated.

Mandating Aadhaar for receipt of subsidies
The petitioners then turned to Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, which makes Aadhaar mandatory for receiving subsidies. Under this, it was argued, any one of 18 ID proofs, including ration cards, could be shown to obtain Aadhaar. Once obtained, however, every one of these ID proofs were in effect invalidated.

It was argued that the livelihood of the people could not be made dependent on a machine that was probabilistic and inherently faulty. The Supreme Court’s judgment in the Swaraj Abhiyan case, which permitted alternative identifications other than ration cards for receiving entitlements under the National Food Security Act in drought-affected areas, was quoted in this context.

A man goes through the process of eye scanning for the Unique Identification (UID) database system, also known as Aadhaar, at a registration centre in New Delhi, India. Image: Reuters
Aadhaar-PAN can be circumvented by entering 12 Zeros
Turning to the Aadhaar-PAN judgment, the petitioners argued that an important argument of the State, in that case, was that the Aadhaar PAN linkage was a foolproof method of ensuring that there were no fake PANs. Yet, an example of a person was cited who simply entered 12 zeros in the required column, and his income tax returns were accepted, processed, and refund made.

A strict interpretation of ‘money bill’
On completion of Datar’s arguments, senior counsel P Chidambaram commenced his arguments. His arguments dealt extensively with the classification of the Aadhaar Bill as a ‘money bill’. This term is defined under Article 110 of the Constitution, as a bill that deals ‘only’ with certain issues, such as regarding the imposition of tax or the borrowing of money by the Indian government, or the appropriation of money from the Consolidated Fund of India.

It was argued that the term ‘only’ be strictly interpreted. This is in view of the fact that a money bill is a very special kind of bill, one which leads to the removal of the powers of the Rajya Sabha and the President in the passing of the legislation. This, it was argued, required very careful and strict interpretation to classify a given bill as a money bill.

Arguments for the petitioners will continue on Tuesday, 13 March.

Sources of arguments include live tweeting of the case by @SFLC.in@gautambhatia88 and @prasanna_s, and LiveLaw reports.

Read our past coverage of the on-going Aadhaar Supreme court hearing:











The author is a lawyer and author specializing in technology laws. She is also a certified information privacy professional.

Published Date: Mar 08, 2018 12:53 PM | Updated Date: Mar 08, 2018 12:53 PM


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