Aadhaar scheme does not violate Right to Privacy, says SC

The Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed apprehension that the Aadhaar scheme violates citizens' Right to Privacy, saying minimal data was collected in the enrolment process.

Justice A K Sikri, writing the judgement for the CJI, himself and Justice A M Khanwilkar, said that minimal biometric data in the form of iris and fingerprints is collected and the authentication process is not exposed to the Internet.

He also refused to agree with the submission of the petitioners that the Aadhaar project violated the Right to Privacy with respect to personal demographic and biometric information collected, stored and shared as there was no law authorising these actions.


The top court said that Aadhaar Act truly seeks to secure to the poor and deprived persons an opportunity to live their life and exercise liberty.

"By ensuring targeted delivery through digital identification, it not only provides them a nationally recognized identity but also attempts to ensure the delivery of benefits, service and subsidies with the aid of public exchequer/Consolidated Fund of India," the bench said.

Justifying the scheme, it said the state was using Aadhaar as an enabler for providing deserving section of the society their "right to food, right to livelihood, right to receive pension and other social assistance benefits" by bringing their right to life to "fruition".

"This necessity of Aadhaar has arisen in order to ensure that such benefits are given to only genuine beneficiaries. The Act aims at efficient, transparent and targeted delivery of subsidies, benefits and services. In the process, it wants to achieve the objective of checking the corrupt practices at various levels of distribution system which deprive genuine persons from receiving these benefits," the court said.

It said that enrolment in Aadhaar of the underprivileged and marginalised section of the society to avail the welfare schemes actually amounts to empowering these persons.

"On the one hand, it gives such individuals their unique identity and, on the other hand, it also enables such individuals to avail the fruits of welfare schemes of the government which are floated as socio-economic welfare measures to uplift such classes. The scheme ensures dignity to such individuals. This facet of dignity cannot be lost sight of and needs to be acknowledged," the court said.

"There needs to be balancing of two competing fundamental rights, right to privacy on the one hand and right to food, shelter and employment on the other hand. Axiomatically both the rights are founded on human dignity," it added.

Justice D Y Chandrachud, however, wrote a dissenting verdict and said allowing private entities to use Aadhaar numbers, under Section 57, will lead to commercial exploitation of the personal data of individuals without consent and could also lead to individual profiling.

"These preferences could also be used to influence the decision making of the electorate in choosing candidates for electoral offices. This is contrary to privacy protection norms. Data cannot be used for any purpose other than those that have been approved."

Justice Ashok Bhushan also concurred with Justice Sikri and said collection of demographic and biometric data under the Aadhaar Act does not violate the fundamental right of privacy as the information sought is limited and only for the purpose of identification.

He said an individual while interacting with society reveals several information, like name, age, date of birth and residential address, which is also sought under Aadhaar and therefore, there can be "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in giving such data.

Justice Bhushan also said that the biometric information obtained for Aadhaar enrolment were photographs, fingerprints and iris scan, "which are least intrusion in physical autonomy of an individual".