Supreme Court ruling affirms there is no scope for snooping: Ravi Shankar Prasad

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court judgement holds the Aadhaar Act to be constitutionally valid and affirms that the platform doesn’t lead to any surveillance or snooping, minister for electronics and IT, law and justice Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

“Aadhaar empowers the poor by taking welfare measures directly to the people and we have saved Rs 90,000 crore through the direct benefits transfer … The real beauty of this judgement is that it outlines the fine blend between dignity of the poor, balancing with their privacy and good governance,” he told ET, terming the judgement as “historic”.

The government will hold extensive consultations with the likes of the ministries of telecom, finance and human resource development on how banks, mobile companies and educational bodies can continue using Aadhaar, he said. The Supreme Court in its landmark judgement on Wednesday struck down a portion of the Aadhaar Act that permits use of Aadhaar-based authentication by the government or companies.


"There will be proper interministerial consultation over issues of human resource ministry on use (of the ID) by CBSE, and other educational institutions; finance ministry on the use by banks, and the telecom ministry on use by mobile companies," he said. After the "widest consultation possible", if some proactive corrective measures are required to be taken, the government will take those, he said. "The judgement has come out, so a follow up has to be done; with what measure, with which instrument and for what purposes are matters of examination."

An initial interpreted of the judgement is that Aadhaar would now be out of bounds for private companies such as banks and telecom service providers as a means of establishing identity. Scores of fintech startups which had built their businesses around real-time Aadhaar authentication would have to either shut shop or look for an alternative business model. Prasad said his message to the fintech industry, which is worried over the judgement, would be “don't panic”.

“I only want to assure them that, don't panic, we are deeply cognisant of the initiative of the fintech industry in India.” Over the last several years, banks and mobile phone companies have become heavily reliant on the UIDAI’s electronic KYC (Know Your Customer) process for issuing new telecom connections or bank accounts due to its real-time authentication feature and cost efficiency over paper based means. The minister said as of now 97 crore bank accounts, owned by 61 crore people, have been linked to Aadhaar, and so have more than 80 crore mobile phones subscribers.

Since its launch in 2009, Aadhaar has enrolled about 1.2 billion people. Close to 30-35 million enrolment and update services are undertaken every day by banks and authentication agencies.