[Aadhaar Day-1 To 38] Here Is The Summary Of Supreme Court's Second-Longest Hearing

Supreme Court of India to pronounce the Judgment in the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other. Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 TomorrowThe Constitution Bench reserved the order on May 10 after 38 days long hearing in the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other. Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016.Bringing to a conclusion that which, in the words of Attorney General K. K. Venugopal, was the longest hearing in the history of the apex court, second only to that in the landmark Kesavananda Bharti case, the Supreme Court had on May 10 reserved its judgment on the string of writ petitions, pending since 2012, challenging the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project.In a marathon hearing spanning over 38 days, submissions for and against the project, which seeks to establish a database of personal identity of every Indian resident, by assimilating their demographic and biometric information, were advanced before The five-judge bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A. K. Sikri, A. M. Khanwilkar, D. Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.While Senior Counsel Shyam Diwan, Gopal Subramanium, Kapil Sibal, K. V. Vishwanathan, Meenakshi Arora, Sajan Poovayya, Arvind Datar, P. Chidambaram, Anand Grover, C. U. Singh, P. V. Surendranath and Sanjay Hegde appeared on behalf of the petitioners, the respondents, being the Union of India, the states and the UIDAI, and the intervenors were represented by the AG, ASG Tushar Mehta, Senior Advocates Rakesh Dwivedi, Neeraj Kishan Kaul and Jayant Bhushan, Advocates Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Zoheb Hossain.The sequence of events leading the challenge, stemming from the alleged violation of the right to privacy, before the five-judge constitution bench are as follows-On September 23, 2013, a bench of two judges had directed that no person be made to suffer for not possessing a Unique Identification Number even if the same has been mandated by any government authority and that the Aadhar card be issued only after due inspection so as to not issue the same to illegal immigrants.On March 24, 2014, in SLP (Crl.) 2524/2014, it had been reiterated that no one shall be deprived of any services or social schemes for the want of Aadhar and all government authorities had been directed to accordingly modify any circulars or notifications issued by them.The order dated September 23, 2013 had been reaffirmed on March 16, 2015 by a three-judge bench.Thereafter, on August 11, 2015, the same 3 judge bench had held that the Union of India shall publicise via both print and electronic media that Aadhar is not mandatory for any social security schemes other than Public Distribution System scheme and the LPG Distribution scheme. Further, with a view “to give a quietus to the kind of controversy raised in this batch of cases once for all”, it was deemed necessary “that the ratio decidendi of M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) is scrutinized and the jurisprudential correctness of the subsequent decisions of this Court where the right to privacy is either asserted or referred be examined and authoritatively decided by a Bench of appropriate strength”.Subsequently, on October 15, 2015, a 5 judge bench of the top court had added the MGNREGA scheme, the National Security Assistance Programme, the PM Jan Dhan Yogana and Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme to the earlier list of two schemes.Also, it was held that the order dated September 23, 2013, shall continue to be in force and Aadhar shall be purely voluntary till such time the matter is finally decided by the Court one way or the other.Finally, on July 18, 2017, the five-judge bench noted “that it has become essential for us to determine whether there is any fundamental right of privacy under the Indian Constitution. The determination of this question would essentially entail whether the decision recorded by this Court in M.P. Sharma by an eight-Judge Constitution Bench and also, in Kharak Singh by a six-judge Constitution Bench, that there is no such fundamental right, is the correct expression of the constitutional position. Before dealing with the matter any further, we are of the view that the issue noticed hereinabove deserves to be placed before the nine-Judge Constitution Bench...”By virtue of the verdict pronounced on August 24, 2017 in Justice K. S. Puttaswamy [(2017) 10 SCALE 1], the nine judges of the apex court had unanimously read the right to privacy into the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21.In the meantime, Aadhaar-based E-KYC for new as well as existing mobile phone connections was canvassed in the February 6, 2017 order in Lokniti Foundation, and on June 9, 2017, the mandate of Aadhaar-PAN linkage under section 139AA of the Income Tax Act of 1961 was upheld in Binoy Viswam.Here are the excerpts from the 38 days of the final hearing, as it transpired...

[Aadhaar Day-1 To 38] Here Is The Summary Of Supreme Court's Second-Longest Hearing

Mehal Jain

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