Dilip Simeon's blog

At the latest hearing on Aadhaar in the Supreme Court today, Arghya Sengupta of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy who was arguing on behalf of the Government started with two broad arguments for the Union of India and UIDAI:  (1) That proportionality could not be read into Article 14, and  (2) The idea of informational self-determination was equivalent to   privacy and privacy was referred to a larger bench.   He countered the proportionality arguments by citing judgments from the UK. He said that a statute could not be struck down for disproportionate penalty because penalty could be decided by the wisdom of Parliament.   Sengupta said that the object of this amendment is to fight corruption but no legislative order can completely solve the problem 100%. Sengupta said the object of the amendment is not to discriminate between those who have Aadhaar and those who don't but rather to weed out fake PAN cards.  He then argued that informational self-determina...

Concerned Citizens Call For Independent Audit of Aadhaar Database In a shocking security breach of Aadhaar, India’s biometric ID project for residents, the police have arrested 10 men in Uttar Pradesh in North India for successfully creating fake biometrics identities in the Aadhaar database, by cloning fingerprints. On September 11, the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force caught a 10-member gang who have been impersonating the credentials of certified Aadhaar operators both by faking the operators’ fingerprints using photopolymer resin, and by illegally cracking open enrolment software of the Unique Identification Authority of India(UIDAI). As per news reports, the criminal gang lifted the fingerprints of the operators sub-contracted by the UIDAI, printing the fingerprints on a butter paper. Additionally, they illegally used a software vulnerability to bypass the iris authentication check established by the government. Such a breach would allow any one to send enrolment packets int...

The Modi government is defying the SC, whose standing judgements make it clear that e nrolment into Aadhaar is “ purely voluntary .”  But it is tax-paying Indians who now face a choice between obtaining an Aadhaar card to comply or being ascribed the status of a criminal. In defence of the move to make Aadhaar mandatory for the filing of tax returns, the government proffers the argument that it would  reduce tax evasion . If this is true, its position would amount to the unconscionable one of privileging expedience in the pursuit of its interests—presumably law enforcement in this instance—over respecting the fundamental freedoms that democracies themselves are constructed to preserve. Every arm of the Indian state exists at the pleasure of, and in service to Indian citizens. The Aadhaar programme suggests that the government is losing sight of this fact. It is difficult to understate the scale and significance of Aadhaar, the government’s programme for a national identi...

By law, you should not be denied any government service in India if you don’t have an Aadhar card number. So why do various government programs continue to ignore three Supreme Court orders and insist on the dreaded number, and how are they getting away with it? In the last year-and-a-half, the Supreme Court has said at least three times that having an Aadhaar number is not to be made mandatory. Yet, governments and institutions have persisted with their demand for people’s Aadhaar numbers as a condition for getting entitlements and services. Has the latest Supreme Court  order  on March 16 – reiterating Aadhaar cannot be mandatory – solved the problem? Here’s the deal with what’s going on. What is Aadhaar? Aadhaar is the brand name for the number being produced under the Unique Identification (UID) project. The  Unique Identification Authority of India  (UIDAI) was set up in 2009 by an executive notification to generate and assign unique identification nu...

Supreme Court’s rare 9-Judge Bench rejects government’s position, upholds right to privacy as a fundamental right in biometric UID/Aadhaar number case Verdict is against mass surveillance makes Aadhaar Act an unjust black act UID/Aadhaar remains voluntary  Pronouncing the verdict, in the 12 digit biometric Unique Identification (UID)/Aadhaar number project case, the Supreme Court’s rare 9-Judge Bench recognized that “The right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as a part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution” of India. It further said that “Decisions (of the Court) subsequent to Kharak Singh which have enunciated the position” and “lay down the correct position in law.” In Kharak Singh v. State of U.P. & Others, AIR 1963 SC 1295, the decision was rendered by a Bench of six judges. It categorically stated that “The decision in Kharak Singh to the extent tha...

Indians have serious red tape PTSD. We live with chronic anxiety about the documents that get us the entitlements and paid services we need - food, cooking gas, SIM cards, sale deeds, passports and so on. We’re so tyrannised by bureaucracy that when we hear of an official document that might simplify life, we fall upon it with cries of joy. We laminate and file it, make 294 copies of it, and scan the sucker just to be sure. Thus it was with Aadhaar, the biometrics-based unique identification number. It was going to be purely voluntary, and could be used in lieu of other identification. Imagine that - one piece of paper to cut through the mess! A billion of us ran out and got it. It’s got to be the biggest bait-and-switch in history.   UJWALA UPPALURI: Aadhaar programme violates democratic process & constitutional rights I failed to educate myself about how the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was building and handling the database to which I was voluntar...

Court Room 8 of the Supreme Court was the scene of an electrifying exposition by advocate Shyam Divan, a civil litigation expert, on the constitutional validity of Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, that mandates linking of the Aadhaar number with the Pan card, and mandatory quoting of it for filing of income tax returns. 'I Can Change My Password. I Cannot Change My Fingerprints': Advocate Shyam Divan Continues Compelling Argument Against Aadhaar Divan's debate was tweeted by lawyer  Gautam Bhatia , giving those outside the courtroom a sense of what is at stake. Divan was being heard by a Bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan. Section 139AA, introduced through the Finance Act, 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of I-T returns and making application for allotment of PAN with effect from July 1, 2017. As  Legally India noted , the general mood of the anti-Aadhaar campaigners was ...

LAST week the Union food ministry issued an unprecedented diktat. It has insisted that each family member must possess an Aadhaar number within four months, to be eligible for subsidised foodgrains under the National Food Security Act. This ties in with the larger plan for all ration shops by 2019 to verify Aadhaar biometrics at every transaction. So, not only must 210 million families possess unique numbers for each member, they must also queue up every month to prove their thumbprints. But does this make any logical sense? First, the ration dealer can still give less grain than the printed receipt. Only in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are electronic weighing scales connected to stem “quantity deception”. But they too work only when there is electricity. Besides, the greatest pilferage occurs from godowns, not ration shops. Second, to weed out ghost cards and “identity fraud,” a one-time exercise to match ration cards with the population census would have been more than su...

The Supreme Court of India lambasted the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre for making Aadhaar card a mandatory prerequisite to avail government services. The government was told that the Aadhaar can only be an optional requirement, as per the court's earlier ruling on the issue. The court was making the observations while hearing a PIL filed against the government's decision of making Aadhaar compulsary. To this, the Centre responded saying Pan cards were found to be misused, and the only option to combat this problem was to make Aadhaar mandatory. "We found a number of PAN cards were being used to divert funds to shell companies. To prevent it (from happening), the only option was to make Aadhar card mandatory," said Attorney General of India, Mukul Rohatgi, appearing in the Supreme Court on the government's behalf. Last month, the government had said it is  mandatory  to use one's Aadhaar card while filing Income Tax returns. The move...

Since every instance of use of Aadhaar for authentication or for financial transactions leaves behind logs in the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) databases, the government can potentially have very detailed information about everything from the your medical purchases to your use of video-chatting software. The space for digital identities as divorced from legal identities gets removed. Clearly, Aadhaar has immense potential for profiling and surveillance. Our only defence: law that is weak at best and non-existent at worst. The Aadhaar Act and Rules don’t limit the information that can be gathered from you by the enrolling agency; it doesn’t limit how Aadhaar can be used by third parties (a process called ‘seeding’) if they haven’t gathered their data from UIDAI; it doesn’t require your consent before third parties use your Aadhaar number to collate records about you (eg, a drug manufacturer buying data from various pharmacies, and creating profiles using Aadhaa...

New Delhi:  Despite five Supreme Court orders since September 2013 stating that the Aadhaar card cannot be a mandatory requirement for access to government services or subsidies, the reality on the ground continues to remain very different. The point was underlined at a press conference in Delhi yesterday where, besides lawyers and experts, a resident of Yamuna Khadar, Delhi described how he was denied emergency treatment in two public hospitals when he and his friend required it because the friend did not have an Aadhaar card. “In the ration system in Delhi, the UID project has been used as a tool of exclusion,” said Anjali Bhardwaj of Satark Nagrik Sangathan. Voices from the field spoke of how Aadhaar has emerged as a barrier to the poor, especially women and children, accessing their entitlements. Ramlalli from Lal Gumbad, Delhi had applied for a new ration card under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). She explained that her children’s names were not included ...

Delhi High Court directs Delhi government to operationalise transparency, grievance redress and accountability provisions of National Food Security Act, says no deserving person should be left out of the ambit of food security September 1, 2017 In a landmark hearing today, a bench of the Delhi High Court comprising Chief Justice Geeta Mittal & Justice C. Hari Shankar said that were appalled to note that the Delhi government had failed to promulgate rules under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) including those related to transparency, grievance redress and accountability provisions despite passage of more than 3 years since the enactment of the law. The Court directed the government to frame Rules and operationalise all provisions of the law in a time-bound manner to ensure proper functioning of ration shops in Delhi. Rules under the law are required to be framed by the State government, but till date the Delhi government had not promulgated any rules. These direction...

सुप्रीम कोर्ट की संविधान पीठ के समक्ष ‘आधार’ पर सुनवाई आज, जानिए वे बातें जो मीडिया नहीं बताएगा सुप्रीम कोर्ट के जस्टिस चेलमेश्‍वर की तीन सदस्‍यीय खंडपीठ द्वारा आधार विशिष्‍ट पहचान पत्र पर 11 अगस्‍त, 2015 को दिए गए फैसले के 700 दिन बाद सुप्रीम कोर्ट की संविधान पीठ 18-19 जुलाई, 2017 को यूआइडी/आधार के मुकदमे की सुनवाई करने जा रही है। इस संविधान पीठ में भारत के मुख्‍य न्‍यायाधीश, जस्टिस चेलमेश्‍वर, जस्टिस एसए बोबडे, जस्टिस चंद्रचूड़ और जस्टिस अब्‍दुल नजीर बैठेंगे। इस निर्णायक सुनवाई से पहले यूआइडी के मुकदमे से लंबे समय से जुड़े रहे एक्टिविस्‍ट गोपाल कृष्‍ण ने 14 जूलाई को जनांदोलनों की एक सभा में छत्‍तीसगढ़ के पिठोरा में एक लंबा व्‍याख्‍यान आधार के खतरों पर दिया था। मीडियाविजिल अपने पाठकों के लिए पूरे व्‍याख्‍यान का ऑडियो प्रस्‍तुत कर रहा है जिसे सुनना इस मामले के बुनियादी पहलुओं को समझने के लिहाज से बेहद अहम होगा। http://www.mediavigil.com/investigation/gopal-krishna-on-uidaadhaar-ahead-of-hearing-in-sc/ For more background information visit : Defying Fundamental Rights with I...

Sita of Karkala village, Lassadiya Panchayat, was one of many who spoke at the annual MKSS Mazdoor Mela in Bhim on May 1. “I have no Aadhaar card, I don’t know why they say my fingerprints don’t show. Without Aadhaar, I am denied work under the MGNREGA, and get no rations. I am a single woman, and have no other source of income. What will I eat, and how will I survive?” she said. Her anaemic condition is apparent, and she should be classified as a gross administrative failure, triggering emergency corrective action. But for the ruling elite in Delhi and Jaipur, she is just a digit — one more, or one less in a policy framework they are determined to impose for their own ends. There are many women who share Sita’s anguish. Though already enrolled in Aadhaar, “voluntarily” as the government would have it, the biometric eco-system, for one reason or another, has failed to authenticate them, denying them access to rations, pensions, work. They speak with the pain and frustration of...

The Supreme Court has reiterated three times that is not mandatory for Indians to enrol for the programme and cannot be denied services if they lack an identity n umbe r Three times – on September 23, 2013; March 24, 2014; and on March 16, 2015 – the Supreme Court has ordered that it is not mandatory for Indians to enrol for an Aadhar unique identity number. These rulings should not have been necessary, since participation in the Unique Identification project was being promoted as being purely voluntary in the first place. Yet, after the 2013 order, the Finance Ministry, the Unique Identification Authority of India that administers the Aadhar programme and other organisations pleaded with the court to change its order. The court was not moved. The government, the UIDAI, the states and the agencies carried on regardless, threatening people that they would be excluded from services if they did not enrol. That is why there are three orders, one for each year since 2013, directing...

In the village last week in which I met a man who had an  Aadhaar  card but could not use it because manual labour had erased the lines on his fingertips, nobody was literate. There is no road to the village, electricity is erratic and clean water impossible. Village water is so awful that villagers regularly get sick, but to get to the nearest hospital they have to walk 2 km to the highway where they take a bus to the nearest town. To find work they catch the same bus to a stone mine 50 km away, where they earn Rs 300 a day, of which they spend Rs 60 on transport. The rest on somehow staying alive. It has always been this way, but when the BJP government came to power and the Prime Minister promised ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ they hoped that things would change. The one thing that has changed is that they are all forced now to have an Aadhaar card, and if they want work under the MNREGA, they need to upload their details to get a job card. Nobody in the village has a...

Harish Khare, editor-in-chief of  The Tribune , the independent, Chandigarh-based newspaper known for punching above its weight on the national media scene, is on his way out,  The Wire  has learned. Word of his departure comes weeks after  The Tribune ‘s exposé of a security flaw  in the Aadhaar database that allowed middlemen to access key personal information about all those enrolled in the government’s ‘voluntary’ universal ID scheme database. The story won Khare and his team plaudits from privacy advocates and the media fraternity but also led to the  filing of criminal charges against the reporter , Rachna Khaira, as the UIDAI scrambled to limit the damage. The FIR filed was not the only form of offensive intervention the newspaper attracted in the aftermath of the story.  The Tribune ‘s exposé, which came bang in the middle of the Supreme Court’s hearings on the privacy and security aspects of Aadhaar, proved deeply embarrassing to the Mo...

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF INDIA: INDIA DOES NOT NEED THE CAA-NPR-NRIC 9 January 2020 Dear Fellow Citizens of India, Over the past few weeks, many of you have been understandably agitated over the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 ("CAA"). Your fears have been compounded by the contradictory and confusing statements made by spokespersons of the Government of India on the implementation of the National Register of Indian Citizens ("NRIC"),   Though that government now seeks to delink the National Population Register (“NPR”) from the NRIC, we, the Constitutional Conduct Group, comprising former civil servants from the All-India and Central Services committed to the Constitution of India, consider it our duty to inform you that the three issues are linked, acquaint you with the facts regarding the NPR, NRIC and the CAA and emphasise why these measures need to be resolutely opposed. For easy comprehension, we are listing the issues ...

The bright sun shining over the vast idyllic fields of Jharkhand’s Latehar district is only a mirage. The shadow of hunger sparkles even brighter here. In Sewdhara, a hamlet nestled deep within the forests, 50-year-old Sonmati Kunwar is sitting under a neem tree to weave  soop  — a bamboo basket used for winnowing. A widow with no land of her own to cultivate, she is dependent on minor forest produce and casual labour to subsist. Every morning, she leaves her children and walks into the forests surrounding the village to collect bamboo; dries it for over a fortnight in the sparing winter sun, and shreds it into pieces to make it possible to weave. "If I work for very long, and without rest, I will complete two baskets in a day," she explains, her eyes still set on the  soop . For the next few days she will clean the fully woven baskets and dry them. Later, she will carry her produce to the local market in the block headquarter, about two hours away from the vill...

NB: The atmosphere of impunity that has overtaken the country since this government came to power has crossed all limits. Now the guardians of law are threatening citizens with murder. The message delivered to Shabnam is meant for all opponents of the so-called Sangh Parivar. Welcome to modern India - DS New Delhi, July 15: Eminent social activist Shabnam Hashmi has sought a thorough probe into death threats to her allegedly by a Delhi policeman over phone. She has written a letter to the Delhi Police Commissioner and sent its copy to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. "I was directly threatened that I will be killed in an encounter," Hashmi told reporters at a press conference at the Constitution Club here on Saturday. She informed that a man who claimed to be Sub Inspector Sandip Malik from Lajpat Nagar police Station threatened her over phone Friday night. The cop told her that there is the new law according to which whoever doesn't have an Aadhaar card and...