Aadhaar linking can only curb PAN card duplication, says petitioner

NEW DELHI: The government is selling Aadhaar as a panacea for all ills, critics of the move to link the biometric id of individuals with their income tax account said in the Supreme Court.

“Aadhaar has become like one of those herbal remedies which can cure everything ... terrorism, black money...," senior advocate Arvind P Datar told a two-judge bench, which is hearing a slew of petitions challenging an amendment to the Income Tax Act that made linking of Aadhaar and the income tax permanent account number (PAN) mandatory.

The amendment makes PAN invalid if not linked to Aadhaar by July 1. On Thursday, the court reserved its judgement on the legality of this. In previous hearings, the government defended the law, rejecting claims against it over privacy concerns and terming biometric identification as a vital feature of contemporary society.

On Thursday, Datar questioned the government's view that linking the two would curb black money. “It would curb duplication of PAN cards, not black money,” he said.

“It is not a reasonable restriction given the government's own 2005 data that only 0.4% PAN cards were duplicated,” he said. “What is the rationale of harassing 99.6% for 0.4%? Where is the fresh data to warrant this monumental change?" He contended that the new system would ruin small businesses which may not have either PAN or Aadhaar for some reason.

This is a completely unreasonable restriction on the right to trade under, he said. Also, people who haven’t linked the two won’t be able to file their returns and may face huge penalty, he added.

Datar argued that such an important change in the law, especially one with penal consequences, was brought about without any debate in any House. Nor was it referred to a committee, he said, adding that there was only a general debate on the Finance Bill.

He accused the government of trying to impose Aadhaar step by step on citizens. Any change in the law would have to be brought in through a change in the Aadhaar Act and not in the I-T Act, he said.

The petitioners had argued that linking Aadhaar — which captures fingerprints and iris scan — with PAN violated individuals’ right to body. During the hearing this week, the government’s lawyer rejected that view, telling the court that the individual's right to body was not absolute. Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, in his last minute intervention, objected to the government's no right over body view, saying some basic human rights cannot be taken away. "The state can't say that it owns all rights which it will release by bits," he said.