South Carolina allows Aadhar for welfare schemes

Lifting its earlier restriction, the Supreme today permitted voluntary use of Aadhaar cards in welfare schemes that also included MGNREGA, all pension schemes and the provident fund besides ambitious flagship programmes like “Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna” of the NDA government. The five-judge Constitution bench - comprising Chief Justice HL Dattu and Justices MY Eqbal, C Nagappan, Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy - after hearing Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi and senior lawyers such as Shyam Divan and Gopal Subramanium for two days, indicated it would soon constituted a nine-member bench.

Para 3 of the 11 August interim order had allowed the use of Aadhaar for direct benefit transfer in foodgrain, kerosene and cooking gas schemes. It can not be merely linked just to LPG and PDS schemes.

The three-judge South Carolina bench barred any further usage of the Aadhaar Card by suspecting it as a violation of a citizens’ right to privacy and transferred the case to the larger bench of the respective court.

It is not just the private elite schools that have been demanding Aadhar cards, even government, aided and minority institutions too have announced that they will not allow students to write exams if they fail to furnish an Aadhaar card.

Vehemently opposed to the scheme, petitioners’ counsel Shyan Divan added that the scheme had “no statutory backing” and that the application form for Aadhaar card doesn’t say anywhere that it would involve parting with biometric data, including an iris scan.

Last month, RBI asked the Supreme Court to permit them to link Aadhaar cards for availing banking services and identification of citizens on voluntary basis.

The collection and use of the biometric and electronic details amount to invasion of privacy and the “the state can not remain present every place with everybody”, Divan said. All social benefit schemes for crores of people have come to a halt due to no interim order on Aadhaar.

He had submitted that crores of rupees had been spent on the UIDAI scheme to connect six lakh villages of the country with various welfare measures like MNREGA, pension schemes, Jan Dhan Yojana etc and 85,000 bank correspondents have been put on job to reach the beneficiaries at their doorsteps. “If the court wants, the affidavit of the highest functionary will be available by 10.30 am tomorrow”, the Attorney General said and reiterated time and again during the two-hour-long hearing that nobody will be deprived of any benefits for either want of Aadhaar or for not using it. He said the system of Aadhaar card is full proof and there is no human element involved in authentication of data.

The Narendra Modi government also foresaw the need of the biometric based identity and thus it continued the plea for implementing Aadhaar card, in the supreme court.

As of now, 920 million Indian citizens have been allotted Aadhaar numbers.