It’s not money bill and is illegal, says DY Chandrachud

NEW DELHI: Justice DY Chandrachud, in line to be Chief Justice of India in November 2022, stood out for his stirring dissent against Aadhaar, insisting that the Act was a fraud on the Constitution and wholly illegal. His judgement was the minority judgement of one in a bench of five judges.

“Identity is necessarily a plural concept. The Constitution also recognises a multitude of identities through the plethora of rights that it safeguards.

Technology deployed in the Aadhaar scheme reduces different constitutional identities into a single identity of a 12-digit number and infringes the right of an individual to identify herself/himself through a chosen means,” he said.


“Aadhaar is about identification and is an instrument which facilitates a proof of identity. It must not be allowed to obliterate constitutional identity,” he said.

“The legal framework of the Aadhaar Act creates substantive obligations and liabilities which have the capability of impacting on the fundamental rights of residents. A Bill, to be a Money Bill, must contain only provisions which fall within the ambit of the matters mentioned in Article 110. Therefore, the argument that the Aadhaar Act is “in pith and substance” a Money Bill is rejected. Introducing the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill has bypassed the constitutional authority of the Rajya Sabha...,” justice Chandrachud said.

“The entire Aadhaar programme, since 2009, suffers from constitutional infirmities and violations of fundamental rights. The enactment of the Aadhaar Act does not save the project. The Aadhaar Act, the Rules and Regulations framed under it, and the framework prior to the enactment of the Act are unconstitutional.”
To enable the government to initiate steps for ensuring conformity with this judgment, it is directed under Article 142 that the existing data which has been collected shall not be destroyed for a period of one year.

During this period, the data shall not be used for any purpose whatsoever.

At the end of one year, if no fresh legislation has been enacted by the Union government in conformity with the principles which have been enunciated in this judgment, the data shall be destroyed, he said.

Creating strong privacy protection laws and instilling safeguards may address or at the very least assuage some of the concerns associated with the Aadhaar scheme which severely impairs informational self-determination, individual privacy, dignity and autonomy, he said.