Apex court tells NDA govt to clarify stand on Aadhaar

The Supreme Court on Monday sought to know the NDA government’s stand on a plea questioning the legality of data collection under the “Aadhaar” programme launched by the Congress-led UPA.

A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justice A K Sikri asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to apprise the court of the Centre's view on the issue and fixed the matter for further hearing on February 13.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for PIL petitioner Mathew Thomas, contended that all personal details of citizens were being sought in violation of fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Acting on a set of petitions, including the one filed by Justice K S Puttaswamy, the apex court had ordered on September 23, 2013: “No person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory and when any person applies to get the Adhaar Card voluntarily, it may be checked whether that person is entitled for it under the law and it should not be given to any illegal immigrant.”

Through the fresh PIL, the court was urged to quash the gazette notification of January 28, 2009 by the Planning Commission on the matter and to issue a direction to the Union government to destroy all the information collected so far.

Raising the issue of privacy, the petitioner claimed that the collection of data was being done by agencies whose “security credentials are not scrutinised thoroughly” and the card was being issued even to illegal migrants.

“The avowed objectives of UID programme are themselves farcical and the entire exercise is nothing but colossal waste of public money. And exposure of India’s vulnerabilities,” it said.