Constitution Bench hearings on Aadhaar begin: SC asks whether biometric data collected between 2009-2016 should be destroyed
After about seven years since the first challenges to the Aadhaar project, on Wednesday, a Constitution bench began hearing the arguments to decide the legal validity of the project.
Charges against Government of Jharkhand and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
The last few months have seen the cruel starvation deaths of at least four residents of Jharkhand - Santoshi Kumari, Ruplal Marandi, Premani Kunwar and Etwariya Devi. This is a direct result of the actions and inactions of the Government of Jharkhand and UIDAI.
The 12th of January marks the beginning of a month of protests against the UID project by various organisations. Protests were held in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Jharkhand and Bihar have events planned that will take place in the coming weeks.
Rethink Aaadhar wrote to the Chairperson and Members of the committee on the 15th November, 2017 and 14th December, 2017. We raised several concerns including those related to privacy, security and data breaches.
In a hurry to show Aadhaar savings, the Jharkhand government is canceling even genuine ration cards without any prior notice, ground verification, or explanation to ration card holders -- this emerged from both a door to door survey of 135 canceled ration cards in Manika, Jharkhand, and a public hearing at Manika block office, where at least four hunger deaths have been recorded in the past three months.
It has been 849 days since the Indian Supreme Court decided to set up a Constitution Bench to examine if Aadhaar project violates Indian Constitution. Every day that the court delays in deciding on this matter, there are more instances of people suffering because Aadhaar has been made ‘mandatorily voluntary’. Since the matter didn’t get listed in the Supreme Court on its own, there was a mentioning by the lawyers today in morning in the court of the Chief Justice of India.
Rethink Aadhaar cautiously welcomes the Sri Krishna Committee White Paper which has been shared for public comments and inputs. This marks an important first step in a more transparent and accountable pre-legislative process.
Today, the Supreme Court tagged the four new petitions brought before it with the other pending Aadhaar cases. All the petitions will be heard by a Constitution Bench, possibly by end of November. The Court assured the petitioners that if the matter is not heard at the end of November, it would consider issuing interim orders to stay the linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile services.
There have been reports coming in of starvation deaths because people are not being able to access their ration entitlements due to failure to link with and authenticate using Aadhaar. Some of these reports can be found in the update from the Right to Food Campaign at the end of this mail. The State of Aadhaar Report 2016-17 shows that failure rates, after multiple attempts, vary between 7% and 17%. Their subsequently updated figures from here is reproduced below. Other reports showfailure rates as high as 66%.
The Aadhaar Act, 2016 as it says is supposed to be for the “targeted delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services.” But the ground reality tells us a different story.
Thousands of MNEREGA workers gathered at Jantar Mantar for five days from 11th September to 15th September 2017 to express their frustration over lack of wages, no ration, and poor maternity benefits.
On the third day of the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha hundreds of MNREGA rural workers gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi spoke of the varied problems they are facing due to Aadhaar, a biometrics linked ID, being made mandatory to continue getting essential services.
Tukaram from the Jagrat Adivasi Dalit Sangathan, Madhya Pradesh said that in their village, pregnant women faced enormous problems at the time of delivery. "To call the ambulance by calling 108, we are being to show proof of Aadhaar numbers. A woman worker's delivery was delayed because she forgot to carry her Aadhaar card to the hospital."
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).
Delhi High Court appointed Commissioner records exclusion from food rations due to Aadhaar; HC asks Delhi Government to operationalise transparency, grievance redress, accountability provisions of National Food Security Act.
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.
We welcome the judgment of the Supreme Court affirming the Right to Privacy as a fundamental right. This is a historic day.
This judgment comes to us after a reference in the Aadhaar cases starting in in 2012 where the Union Government in August 2015 argued that the fundamental right to privacy does not exist under the Constitution. Since then the government and UIDAI, the agency managing the Aadhaar database, have consistently argued in Court that Indians have no fundamental privacy and that privacy is a concern only of the elite. These pernicious arguments have finally been laid to rest.