Statute can rectify defect during Aadhar data collection says Supreme Court

Aadhar Card

The Supreme Court yesterday said the alleged defect that citizens' biometric details under the Aadhaar scheme were being collected without any law, could be cured by subsequently bringing a statute.

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, however, asked what the position will be with regard to a breach, if any, that could have taken place between 2009, when the Aadhaar scheme was launched, and 2016 when the enabling law came into force. The bench said the Centre came out with the law in 2016 to negate the objection that it was collecting data since 2009 without any authorisation, but the issue which needed consideration was what will happen if the data collected earlier, had been compromised.

"Our (Privacy) judgement said that there has to be a law. They enacted a law to take away the basis of the argument. The absence of a law can be cured, but there may be other issues like whether the data collected (earlier) had the same statutory safeguards. What will happen in case of breach," the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said.

The bench is hearing a clutch of petitions including one filed by former High Court judge Justice K S Puttaswamy challenging the constitutional validity of the Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme and its enabling 2016 Act. Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for the former judge, said the law cannot cure defects like invasion of fundamental rights of citizens and invasion of privacy in this case was "complete once you unlawfully collected information. All this cannot be cured." The advancing of arguments remained inconclusive and will resume today.

Earlier, the senior lawyer had said that the State cannot sit in judgement and rely only on biometric details to establish the identity of its citizens. "Virtual person cannot reduce the real person-hood," he had said, dubbing the Aadhaar Act as "unconstitutional".

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