Govt says Indian citizens do not have right to privacy

The Narendra Modi government on Wednesday raised eyebrows in the Supreme Court during the hearing on PILs, which challenged the validity of Aadhaar cards, asserting that Indian citizens did not have fundamental right to privacy under the constitution.

It said right to privacy cannot be invoked to scrap the Aadhaar scheme. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi representing the Centre told a bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar that "constitution does not confer right to privacy to citizens" and he referred a SC verdict delivered in the 1950s in which a eight judge bench had held that right to privacy was not a fundamental right.

"The law on right to privacy is vague in the country and a larger bench should be constituted to pass an authoritative verdict on the issue. To be frank, question of violation of right to privacy does not arise when it does not exist", the AG said. The petitioners including a former high court judge Justice Puttaswamy and NGO Society for Civil Rights have raised the issue of right to withhold personal information and intrusion into right to privacy by the state.

Two of the interveners in the case - Reetika Khera, an Economics Professor at IIT Delhi, and Sahana Manjesh, a lawyer-have contended that biometric identification denoted for UID, namely the iris scan, finger print identification, and the personal details collected, can easily be misused by a miscreant.

They contend that the manner in which biometric details are collected - without any safeguard - by private contractors and NGOs hired by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) makes it prone to misuse. The Supreme Court had in an interim ruling on September 23, 2013, had said that the card cannot be made mandatory to enjoy government schemes and subsidies.

Stating that there were serious problem the way the UID project is being implemented, they contended that at some places in the enrolment form, the consent box was being tick marked without asking or explaining to people what it meant. On Tuesday, the hearing witnessed sharp exchanges between the court and the AG as the judges fumed at some states continuing to insist on its despite its categorical order that the cards cannot be made mandatory to avail government schemes or subsidies.

Though Rohatgi representing the centre assured that he "will check" and ensure that the apex court order "is adhered to", he urged the three-judge bench to lift the stay. Making it clear that the stalemate on Aadhaar cannot continue, Rohatgi submitted that 80 crore out of 120 crore Indian citizens have already been enrolled spending a whopping Rs 6,000 crore and the government had to ensure that the huge amount does not go down the drain. "It has reached a point of no return", the AG told the court.

(In Association with Mail Today)