Aadhaar case: Supreme Court to resume hearing on legality of biometric ID today

The Supreme Court on Thursday will resume hearing on the legality of Aadhaar biometric ID.

The five-judge constitution bench will hear on the validity of the 12-digit biometric identification number.

On January 23, during the hearing, the petitioners' counsel, Shyam Divan, pointed out that Section 48 allows the government to take over the control of the entire record by citing a public emergency. He also cited section 51 and 57 while arguing for a slew of petitioners challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar matter.

The petitioners' counsel, on January 18, pointed out three issues as the Aadhaar matter was being argued before the five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court.During the hearing, Divan raised three issues before the apex court that included-integrity of the process, the integrity of the information and pervasive violation of fundamental rights.

The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, is hearing a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the identification number.

Since the inception of the Aadhaar card, its validity and possible leakages of data have surfaced time and again.

The apex court has also received petitions against the linkage of this 12-digit number with mobile phones, bank accounts and so on. 

Earlier, the Supreme Court said that there is a need to strike a balance between individual's privacy rights and the State's responsibilities at a time when the nation faces threats of terrorism and money laundering and to keep a tab on welfare expenditure.

Its observation came on January 24 after a senior lawyer, challenging the validity of the government's flagship Aadhaar programme and its enabling Act of 2016, said the Constitution does not allow a surveillance State as it is technically possible now to track every transaction, profile individuals or even "compromise constitutional functionaries".

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, hearing petitions challenging Aadhaar, said no system in the world was secure and the issue was not as to how data is collected, but how the information so collected are used or misused.

"We live in the times of terrorism and money laundering and welfare expenditure (of the state), and this has to be balanced (with individual rights)," the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said.