Indian
Express: National: Thursday, September 27, 2018.
The
Supreme Court judgment on the constitutional validity of Aadhaar is very
disappointing for the poor. The main reason why people like us whose work deals
with social welfare and welfare benefits went to court was because the
constitutional right to life was threatened by the fact that Aadhaar was made
mandatory to get benefits—even though the people are entitled to them.
Because
of Aadhaar, a large number of people got excluded and the safeguards that were
put in place never gave them an opportunity to get their benefits. The people
who do not have Aadhaar are not being excluded; it is the people who have
Aadhaar and are still not able to avail the social benefit schemes who are the
real losers.
As
a result, there have been hunger deaths—and no accountability for that. The
court judgment, by allowing the mandatory use of Aadhaar for welfare benefits
to continue, therefore to us is not in line with a fundamental right of people:
the right to life. That is something that the Justice Bhushan judgment
said—that nobody should be excluded. But simply saying that has not helped in
the past and there is no reason for us to expect that it would help in the future.
The only way to give relief to the poor would be to not make Aadhaar mandatory.
Allowing
Aadhaar to be linked to PAN (Permanent Account Number) actually means that all
the poor are covered through welfare benefits and income-tax payers and others
are covered through the PAN card. Even though it is no longer necessary to link
Aadhaar to bank accounts, by linking it to PAN, one is in effect linking it to
all financial transactions.
Linking
of Aadhaar as a number actually means nothing. The real question, however,
arises when an individual’s biometrics are linked to either PAN or the social
benefit schemes.
How
can there be a grievance redressal mechanism without it being clearly spelled
out and no accountability fixed? If someone does not get their benefits and
starves or dies, who will be held responsible and what compensation would they
get? This again is unanswered.
We
welcome Justice Chandrachud’s minority opinion that the passing of the Aadhaar
Act as a money bill is a fraud on the Constitution. Actually, we think the
whole process of passage of this law was a fraud on democracy because there was
no public consultation while formulating the law, and earlier there was no law
either.
Without
a law, even though the court repeatedly said that Aadhaar cannot be made
mandatory, it was made mandatory. In Rajasthan, we have found that among those
with Aadhaar who are entitled to benefits, 20 per cent of them are not able to
draw their rations and we have found that crores of people were not able to
take their MGNREGA wages because of Aadhaar.
Somebody has to answer for that and our struggle will continue.
This
is in violation of Article 21 of the Constitution. The result of this is that
many of these people have opted out of the rural employment generation scheme.
This is the reason that people like us have been saying that Aadhaar is
unconstitutional because we are entitled to certain benefits. And only because
of the law which forces us to provide data are we not able to avail the
benefits.
Another
section of society that has faced hardships because of the Aadhaar system are
pensioners. Around 10 lakh pensioners were taken off the list due to the
Aadhaar system. We have been saying time and again that the prime minister
claiming that the government has saved a certain amount by weeding out
fictitious beneficiaries is worse—as amounts which have not been disbursed to
beneficiaries cannot be termed as savings. This is all because of the Aadhaar
system. In fact, it is an insult to the beneficiaries.
However,
all is not bad. The fact that the verdict can be reviewed is a good sign. Also,
another good aspect of the verdict is the scrapping of Section 57 of the law.
Now, private companies cannot access details of citizens.
However,
all is not good even in this aspect. There are many social benefits which are
run under the public-private partnership model. This means the government can
still access data of individuals and we do not know where and to whom the data
is given.
As
activists, we have made use of the Right to Information (RTI) Act a lot. The
RTI allows us to keep a watch on the government’s moves but Aadhaar has allowed
the government to watch people’s moves. When by law you have to provide your
data, where it goes is a big issue. We are deeply disappointed that Section 7,
which was the core of the argument in the entire case and deals with the
generation of a Unique Identification Number for availing benefits, has not
been struck down. We are deeply disappointed that the core was used as an excuse.
We are also deeply disappointed that the middle class has not got any relief
from the verdict.
Like
demonetisation, the government thinks that Aadhaar can be imposed on the
public. But somewhere, we want the government to say ‘Please vote on Aadhaar’.
We certainly want to say, please vote on Aadhaar.