Supreme Court judge, opponents raise pitch on Aadhaar

NEW DELHI: A judge on the Supreme Court bench hearing arguments over the legality of Aadhaar cited reports in the ‘Economist’ magazine and by the World Bank praising the programme, and asked why should the court ignore concerns on social security leakages which the government says the biometric ID would help plug.

Those opposing Aadhaar, that is used for identifying beneficiaries of welfare schemes, told the court that there were also reports in local journals about starvation deaths because entitlements were denied.

The five-judge bench is hearing petitions that say Aadhaar violated the citizen’s fundamental right to privacy. During hearing on Tuesday, Justice DY Chandrachud asked how the court could ignore the concerns of the government over leakages in welfare programmes.


But Shyam Divan, the lead counsel for the petitioners, said: “Leakages were not sufficient to justify such aggregation of data on such a large scale.”

Divan said the Aadhaar structure must be dismantled as it set the stage for the state to carry out “profiling and potential targeting, leading to...loss of privacy”.