Why Justice Chandrachud dislikes Aadhaar - the lone dissenting voice speaks his mind

Justice DY Chandrachud, the lone dissenting judge on Supreme Court's five-judge Constitution bench, today said the Aadhaar Act could not have been passed as Money Bill as it amounts to a fraud on the Constitution and is liable to be struck down. Justice Chandrachud wrote a separate judgement saying he had expressed some views different from that of the verdict pronounced by Justice A K Sikri.

Aadhaar, in its currrent form, is inconstitutional

Bypassing the Rajya Sabha to pass the Aadhaar Act amounted to subterfuge and the law was liable to be struck down as being violative of Article 110 of the Constitution, he ruled.

Article 110 has specific grounds for Money Bill and the Aadhaar law went beyond this, Justice Chandrachud said, adding that in the current form, the Act cannot be held to be constitutional. He observed that the enactment of the Act does not save the Centre's Aadhaar scheme.

Threat to privacy

Noting that mobile phone has become an important feature of life and its seeding with Aadhaar posed a grave threat to privacy, liberty, autonomy, he favoured deletion of consumers' Aadhaar data by the mobile service providers. Justice Chandrachud also said collection of data may lead to individual profiling of citizens.

Allowing private players to use Aadhaar will lead to profiling, which could be used to ascertain the political views of citizens, the judge, who pronounced his separate verdict, said.

This data was vulnerable to be misused by third party and private vendors, and that too, without the consent of an individual, Justice Chandrachud maintained and said the Aadhaar project has failed to remedy the flaws in its design, leading to exclusion.

He said the Aadhaar programme violated informational privacy, self-determination and data protection. It has been admitted by UIDAI that it stores vital data which is violative of right to privacy, he added.

Prejudice against citizens is 'draconian'

Maintaining that the Prevention of Money Laundering Act Rules proceeded on assumption that every bank account holder is a money launderer, he said the assumption that every individual who opens a bank account is a potential terrorist or a launderer is "draconian", he said.

Justice Chandrachud also held that denial of social welfare measures on grounds of mandatory status of Aadhaar was violation of fundamental rights of citizens. Referring to linking of Aadhaar to several benefits extended to government schools students, he said that legitimate aims can be fulfilled even by employing less intrusive methods.

Citizens' data remains unguarded under UIDAI's watch

There is no institutional responsibility of the UIDAI to protect the data of citizens, he said, adding that there was absence of a regulatory mechanism to provide robust data protection.

If Aadhaar is seeded with every database, then there is chance of infringement of right to privacy, he said. Justice Chandrachud said while Parliament possesses the right to make a law, the absence of protection leads to violation of various rights.

However, he said it was now impossible to live in India without Aadhaar but it was violative of Article 14.

With PTI Inputs