Supreme Court: Why object only to info for Aadhaar?

On the second day of its final hearings in the Aadhaar case that challenges its constitutional validity, the Supreme Court on Thursday questioned why a citizen should object to Aadhaar collecting personal information when the same was voluntarily given to insurance companies and mobile operators.

"You want insurance policy, you go to a private company. You want mobile connection, you go to private entities and part with personal information...The moment the government asks you to give proof of address and other details, you have a problem and you say 'sorry'," a five-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra said.

To this, senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing one of the 27 petitioners, responded, "The objection lay in the possible profiling of individual by aggregation of information with one entity, which ought not to be happening in a democratic government."

To make his case further, he said, "The point here is that you are being asked to part with information to someone you do not know and have no contractual relation with."

During the day-long hearing, Divan further objected to the use of third parties to collect this information.

Divan submitted that the private party was "so much outside the control of the Unique Identification Authority of India" that the information collected could be used for their own commercial purposes. "Moreover, there is no binding contract between the UIDAI and private agencies employed to collect biometric and other details to grant Aadhaar numbers," Divan said.

"What are the nature of safeguards to ensure that the information was not purloined?" the bench then asked, adding the Centre needed to ensure that the information collected was protected from being violated commercially. The matter will continue to be heard next Tuesday on January 23.

Quick volley

• Divan termed the whole scheme as “unconstitutional from beginning to end”. 
• Also referred to the recent ruling where privacy was accorded as a fundamental right 
• Said in this highly digitised world, the State must protect citizens