Indian Express: New Delhi: Wednesday, February 07, 2018.
The right to
a choice is a fundamental element of the rights guaranteed under the
Constitution and the concept of Aadhaar violates it, senior advocate Kapil
Sibal told the Supreme Court while arguing on behalf of petitioners challenging
the constitutional validity of Aadhaar.
“With the
Aadhaar biometric identification system, the government is creating a monolith,
a system with no choices,” Sibal told a five-judge constitution bench.
“Identity is a matter of proof but when we want to state our identity, the
state says we can do it only in one particular way.”
While the RTI
Act gave the right to information to the individual, the Aadhaar Act gives
right to information to the state, Sibal said. He went on to quote the PM’s
Davos speech that ‘whoever controls data
is the most powerful and can shape the world’. “It meant that whoever controls
data in India will control India and the state will use the power like never
before.”
Suggesting
Aadhaar’s utility for national security was exaggerated, Sibal said Aadhaar
can’t identify whether a person was a terrorist or a money launderer unless
there was information.
Justice D Y
Chandrachud intervened at this point. “A law cannot be declared
unconstitutional just because it could be misused. There are number of
rulings by the court to protect this,”
he said.
Sibal said
Aadhaar law was an exception to these rulings of the top court because the law
was already being “misused or abused”.
“The power of
misuse is no ground to declare a law unconstitutional,” Justice Chandrachud
said.
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