New Delhi: During a hearing in the Supreme Court, the Centre today justified the Aadhaar Act by saying that it was a very ‘fair and reasonable law’ which was made under the tests prescribed by the verdict over the right to privacy.
On August 24 2017, a Supreme Court bench comprising nine-judges gave a verdict over the right to privacy as a fundamental constitutional right and termed it as an intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The Central Government cited the verdict in the Supreme Court and said that some reasonable restrictions which can be applied to right to life will also govern the right to privacy.
The constitution bench comprised of a five member judges with the head as Chief Justice Dipak Misra. They examined the legality of Aadhaar scheme and also its enabling 2016 law, which had provisions relating to the state having some authority to seek certain information under the law, a legitimate state interest and the proportionality doctrine to weigh citizens’ privacy and the State’s interests.
“The lead (privacy) judgment of Justice DY Chandrachud says that existence of law, legitimate state interest, and proportionality, are the tests to be applied to judge the privacy violation, if any,” Attorney General KK Venugopal told the bench which also comprised Justices AK Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.
“The Aadhaar Act meets the standards and has adequate safeguards. The Aadhaar Act is a just, fair, and reasonable law. It is in pursuance of a larger public interest, including preventing dissipation of social welfare benefits, prevention of black money and money laundering…,” he said, adding that these all can be termed as “legitimate State interests”.
The Aadhaar scheme also meets the test of proportionality by displaying a rational connection between the means and the goal, he said, adding that all subsidies given by the government were part of right to life with dignity and would prevail over the right to privacy.
While talking about the separate concurring privacy verdicts which were penned by other judges, the Attorney General said they recognized the fact that right to privacy was not “absolute” and legitimate state interests can override it.
In the beginning, he read out the answers given by Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), to the many queries of the lawyers representing those opposed to Aadhaar. Mr Pandey had made a presentation before the Apex court to allay apprehensions over the Aadhaar scheme.
Mr Venugopal said UIDAI cannot provide authentication failure rates at the state level since it cannot track the location of the authentication transactions. And he told that the biometric data failure rates were at 6 per cent for fingerprints and 8.54 per cent for iris at the national level.
“It must be stated that authentication failures do not mean exclusion from or denial of subsidies, benefits or services since the Requesting Entities are obliged under the law to provide for exception handling mechanisms,” he said.
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