Supreme Court Bench Puts Aadhaar Scheme to Stand On Basis of Doubts Regarding Surveillance

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, in the Supreme Court today questioned the government’s order of making Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users. SC highlighted the fact that Aadhaar ruling which was done previously by the court was used as a ‘tool’. The bench which also consisted of renowned justices like Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan on hearing array of petitions challenging Aadhaar and its enabling 2016 law, said its order on a PIL filed by ‘Lokniti Foundation’ had ruled that it was because of national interest that mobile users had to be verified using Aadhaar.

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In an official statement, the bench said: “In fact, there was no such direction from the Supreme Court, but you took it and used it as a toll to make Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users.” Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi in the hearing subtly pointed out that the notification which Department of Telecommunication (DoT) issued, discussed about re-verification of mobile numbers by using e-KYC process and also the Telegraph Act granted “exclusive power to the central government to decide license conditions” of service providers.

To this statement, the bench countered by asking “How can you (DoT) impose a condition on service recipients for seeding Aadhaar with mobile phones,” and also clarified that the license agreements existed between the government and the service providers and the users were not involved.

Dwivedi said that the modus operandi which was taken up to link users’ Aadhaar with their phone numbers was done according to Trai’ recommendations. He further added that the government was fully entitled and had legitimate state interest to ensure that a sim card is given to only those people who applied for it. This way Dwivedi emphasised the absence of intention of surveillance of users on the government’s part.