What Top Lawyers Make Of Government’s Latest Aadhaar Diktat
This is not what originally was sought to be achieved with Aadhaar, they said.
The government’s move to make Aadhaar mandatory to open and operate bank accounts is contrary to its intended purpose and comes at a wrong time as multiple petitions against the biometric ID are pending in the Supreme Court, senior lawyers said.
The continuous linkage of different databases – in the latest instance, bank account data – with Aadhaar increases the possibility of data leakage, Senior Advocate KTS Tulsi told BloombergQuint. The exercise runs contrary to the way the Centre and former UIDAI Chairman Nandan Nilekani had pitched the ID, he said.
Nilekani had said it will not be used for any other purpose and it will not be linked to any other database because it is the linkage that creates a possibility of leakage. We have seen instances of data leakages. If the government goes to create linkages in this fashion, in unlimited numbers, I am afraid it will lead to complete chaos.KTS Tulsi, Senior Advocate
Calling the decision a “colourable exercise of power”, another senior lawyer, Sanjay Hegde, said the government “starts with the presumption that every person in the country is a money launderer”.
“It is far in excess of power of the authorities conferred in them by Parliament... Every such government notification will have to be independently challenged and the courts will have to independently deal with it,” he said.
The decision comes after the Supreme Court on June 9 didn’t strike down Section 39AA of the Income Tax Act that makes Aadhaar mandatory to file tax returns. The tax department has reiterated the need for the unique identification number to file returns.
The cloud over whether Aadhaar can be made mandatory has just been removed by the Supreme Court, said Advocate Somasekhar Sunderesan. “The government is now stepping on the gas.”
Until the larger question of constitutional validity is answered by the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court, I expect many areas of life to be covered by Aadhaar. These are legally valid moves now. Whether they are wise moves would depend on the nature of measures taken.Somasekhar Sunderesan, Advocate
Supreme Court Lawyer Apar Gupta, however, concurred with Tulsi and Hegde, pointing out that the timing of the notification is problematic.
It is of concern that government is notifying the linkage of bank account with Aadhaar. As many people know, cases right now are pending with respect to the legality of the Aadhaar scheme and the government pushing for linking of more and services is against this spirit of the pendency of the dispute or the controversy.Apar Gupta, Lawyer, Supreme Court
The linkage of Aadhaar with various welfare schemes has been challenged in different petitions in the apex court. One such petition challenging linking 17 government schemes with the unique ID will come up for hearing in the top court on June 27.
The Supreme Court last week had ruled that taxpayers without Aadhaar will not have their permanent account numbers invalidated, but those with PAN and Aadhaar will have to link the two. The “partial stay” will remain in place until the issue of “right to privacy” is decided by the Constitution bench.