Privacy Right Can’t Be Claimed Against Identification For Purpose of Public Welfare & Social Schemes :Centre [Read Written Submissions]

Attorney General K K Venugopal, arguing before a  nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court which is deciding whether right to privacy should be declared a fundamental right has said that there can be no claim to a privacy right against identification for the purpose of public welfare and social schemes of the government and to plug leakages and corruption in the administration of such schemes.

“There can be no claim to a privacy right against identification for the purpose of public welfare and social schemes of the government and to plug leakages and corruption in the administration of such schemes. It may be pointed out that the importance and utility of aadhaar for delivery of public services like the PDS, curbing bogus admissions in schools and verification of mobile number subscribers has not only been upheld but endorsed and directed by the supreme court”,  said the written submissions given by the Attorney General to the court.

In PUCL Vs Union of India Supreme court has approved the recommendations of the high powered committee headed by Justice D P Wadhwa which recommended linking of Aadhaar with PDS and encouraged state governments to adopt the same. In state of Kerala and others Vs President, Parents Teachers Association, SNVUP and others, the court directed use of Aadhaar for checking bogus admissions in schools", it said.

While monitoring the PILs relating to night shelters for the homeless and the right to food through the public distribution system, the court lauded and complemented the efforts of state governments for inter alia carrying out biometric identification of the head of family of each household to eliminate fictitious bogus and ineligible BPL household cards

The right to life being a primordial right, every species of rights found by the court to be traceable to the right to life such as the right to food to prevent starvation, a job to eke out a livelihood, medical aid to combat diseases and emergencies and basic education to get rid of the fetters of ignorance, backwardness and caste would be of utmost importance and value. All these attributes of human dignity, traceable to the right to life, can never be the subject matter of a claim based on the right to privacy.

Reference to 9 judges was to decide as to whether M P Sharma and Kharak Singh were rightly decided, and whether a right to privacy of the nature claimed in the present case could ever be countenanced by the court as a fundamental right. In view of the fact that a large section of the people would be deprived of their basic needs and rights if the claim of the petitioners to a fundamental right to privacy is accepted, even if a fundamental right to privacy is held to exist in respect of some other claims, no such right as claimed by the petitioners should be recognized as a fundamental right, it said.

The conclusions arrived at in M P Sharma and Kharak Singh regarding the absence of a fundamental right to privacy under the constitution are supported by the debates in the constituent assembly on this subject. An analysis of these debates reveals that the framers rejected the right to privacy being made part of the fundamental rights under our constitution, it said.

As the AG argued yesterday, the hearing had turned into a right to privacy raised by the “elite” class Vs right to life for millions of poor in the country.

Strongly backing Aadhaar scheme, he submitted before the Supreme Court that right to life of millions of poor in the country through food, shelter and welfare measures was far more important than privacy concerns raised by the elite class.

Controversially, Attorney General K K Venugopal arguing for the Centre also stated that privacy claims required better priority in developed countries “not in country like India where a vast majority of citizens don't have access to basic needs”.

He said right to privacy cannot be invoked to scrap the Aadhaar scheme.

The AG attempted to drive home the point that Aadhaar was essential for good governance, transparent implementation of government programmes and to ensure that benefits reach only those who qualify to get them and not ghost beneficiaries.

“Through aadhaar, benefits of welfare schemes reaches only those who are entitled to . Depriving large section of people of food shelter, welfare schemes is also depriving them of fundamental right to live. Biometric details for aadhaar is essential for saving prople from animal existence”, Venugopal said.

Read the Written Submission Here