The government of West Bengal has always been skeptical of the Central Government’s Aadhar scheme, it has also challenged the constitutional validity of the Aadhar scheme. However, The Supreme Court has asked what was wrong in the proposal of One Nation, One Identity for all Indians. There has been a lot of pleas in the Supreme court regarding the constitutional validity of the enabling law 2016 and the Aadhar scheme.
The West Bengal government, led by Mamata Banerjee, while challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhar scheme on Tuesday made its argument in front of a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra. The Mamata Banerjee government told the bench that Indianness has nothing to do with identifying as a particular kind of identity. They argued that making Aadhar mandatory was NDA’s strategy to utilize civilian’s personal details for political purpose. The corporate sector has recognized that ownership of data on people’s choice is now an important tool for success and NDA is taking advantage of the situation by making the Aadhar mandatory from banking to buying a sim.
Senior advocate and Congress leader Kapil Sibal have been appearing on behalf of West Bengal and two other individuals. He quoted Prime Minister Modi’s speech in Davos saying that “who controls data is most powerful in the modern world and can shape the world”.
Kapil Sibal said that he accepts that data is the most powerful tool in the modern world and further explained that he was not talking about surveillance but data power. He said that Aadhar has become Central government’s righto information about citizens.
“Yes, we all are citizens of India and Indianness has nothing to do with this kind of identity,” he told the five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra along with Justices AM Khanwilkar, Ashok Bhushan, AK Sikri and DY Chandrachud.
The Supreme Court questioned senior advocate Kapil Sibal on what he thought about the concept of ‘one nation, one identity’. He replied that he is a proud Indian but with Aadhar, everything is inherently wrong. He said that the people of the country are more than Aadhar and that this debate is more political than legal.
Kapil Sibal was skeptical of the privacy of an individual being secured in the Aadhar Scheme. He said that in the digital world there is actually no assurance that my data will not be stolen and if my biometric information is stolen in the virtual world then there is no way to retrieve it or prevent its misuse. He said that we are heading towards a dangerous future.
Also pointing one other problem, Mr. Sibal said that Aadhar has to lead to no scope for other modes of identity verification. He added that the banks do not want any other identity verification documents unless it is Aadhar. He said that the United Kingdom had started a similar biometric identity authentication system but they had to scrape it because it was not so secure.
