SC wonders about legality of Aadhaar data collected pre-2016

The Supreme Court on Wednesday wondered about the legal sanctity of the Aadhaar data collected since 2009, prior to the enactment of the 2016 Act, after opponents claimed that this doesn’t have any legal basis and seriously infringed upon citizens’ fundamental right to dignity.

“If we find the executive wrong should it be destroyed,” a five-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra asked senior advocate Gopal Subramanium. “What is the sequitur?”

Subramanium argued that a law brought in post-facto cannot legitimise the collection of data and the invasion of fundamental rights due to collection on such a vast scale for myriad objects. In this context, he pointed out that two states, UK and Germany, had destroyed all such data collected from their citizens after collecting it.


He argued that the Aadhaar architecture was too opaque, uncertain and disproportionate to the legitimate state interest sought to be achieved. It was way too invasive of a citizen’s fundamental rights as it virtually destroys his identity in the process of identifying him for myriad state services, ranging from social security benefits to telecom services to banking, etc.