Counsel in Supreme Court: Strike down law on Aadhaar

New Delhi: Aadhaaar law, which affects “right to privacy” and lacks security for protection of data, should be struck down as unconstitutional, argued senior counsel Shyam Divan in the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Continuing his tirade against the Aadhaar programme, Mr Divan told a five-judge Constitution bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Kanwilkar, D.Y. Chandra-chud and Ashok Bhushan, that Aadhaar law, which is related to breach of personal information, is an ex-facie violation of an individual’s fundamental right to privacy.

The counsel argued that the Aadhaar programme deprives aggrieved individuals of the knowledge required to exercise control over their information. Pointing out that there is no accountability on the agency collecting the biometric data, he contended that the handling of sensitive personal information by the UIDAI is, therefore, manifestly arbitrary and opaque, and consequently ultra-vires the Constitution.

Further, he said it couldn’t be denied that there have been multiple data breaches from several go-vernmental portals, resu-lting in unfettered, unauthorised access to individuals’ Aadhaar numbers. He said reports by privacy and security researchers indicated that such breaches have already affected 135 million Indians. There is an inherent danger of aggregating valuable personal data/ information of all Indian residents in one centralised database.