SC to consider Aadhaar review plea on January 11

The plea contended the Aadhaar Act, 2016 was incorrectly certified as a Money Bill by the Lok Sabha Speaker

The Supreme Court's five-judge bench would on Monday take up a plea for reconsideration of the September 29, 2018 judgement upholding the constitutional validity of Aadhaar.

A five-judge bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan, S Abdul Nazeer and B R Gavai would consider, in the chamber, the review petition filed by Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, former child rights panel Chief Shanta Sinha, S G Vombatkere and others.

The petitioners here sought an open-court hearing and permission to make an oral submission on the ground that important issues relating to the interpretation of the Constitution arose in the present case.

The review petition, filed by advocate Vipin M Nair, challenged the correctness of the Aadhaar judgment passed by a majority of 4:1. Among various grounds, it contended the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016 was incorrectly certified as a Money Bill by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. It further claimed that the Aadhaar failed to meet the strict standard laid out in Article 110(1) (provision on Money Bill) of the Constitution.

"For a legislation that has serious implications on the rights of citizens to be passed without consideration of the Rajya Sabha is nothing but a fraud on the Constitution," it quoted the minority view in the Aadhaar judgement.

A written note settled by senior advocate Shyam Divan for review of the matter pointed out that a five-Judge constitution bench in a judgment, delivered on November 13, 2019, in the case of Rojer Mathew vs South Indian Bank Ltd, has already doubted the correctness of the Aadhaar judgment. The court had then referred the issue relating to the interpretation of Article 110 of the Constitution, to a larger bench.

In their support, they also cited the Sabarimala review judgement passed on November 14, 2019, in which a five-judge bench, at the stage of hearing review petitions, first granted an open-court hearing. Upon finding inconsistency with the law laid down with respect to interpretation of Article 25 and 26 of the Constitution, the court had referred the matter to a larger bench of nine-judge for an authoritative pronouncement on the law.

They also relied upon a decision of a nine-judge constitution bench of May 11, 2020, again, in the case Sabarimala, where the top court, while considering the maintainability of the reference, held that in review petitions arising out of writ petition, the Supreme Court had wide and unhindered powers to correct the position of law.

In 2018, the top court upheld the validity of the Aadhaar programme, stating that in balancing the rights to privacy and dignity of individuals, it was serving a much larger purpose by reaching hundreds of millions of deserving persons. It, however, had restricted the use of Aadhaar to benefits and subsidies and struck down the orders mandating the citizens to link their unique 12-digit numbers with bank accounts and mobile numbers.