Govt’s claim on Aadhaar challenged

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 23

Contesting the Centre’s claim that 115 crore people have been given Aadhaar number, a petitioner in the case challenging its constitutional validity has termed it “puffery”, saying the figure given to the court is quite exaggerated.

Kalyani Sen Menon, one of the petitioners in the case, said Aadhaar was a threat to rights and entitlements of the most vulnerable sections. Terming it an “insecure, unreliable, unnecessary and inappropriate” technology project… being foisted with coercion on the most vulnerable section of Indians, Menon said: “It is threatening their constitutional and legal rights and entitlements every day by denying access to several basic needs.”

Filed ahead of the June 27 hearing before a Constitution Bench, Menon’s affidavit comes in response to the Centre claim that more than 115 crore people have been issued Aadhaar number.

That the faulty premise of the argument of respondent for an ostensible lack of representative character is based on the number of persons who have been enrolled within the Aadhaar scheme, Menon said, terming it an attempt “to conflate the number of persons enrolled to argue an impossibility of exclusion”.

Menon said: “To make such an assertion it brings forth two statistics, the first being more than 95.10% of India’s entire population possesses Aadhaar and further with 115.15 crore enrolments Aadhaar has the widest coverage among citizens. It is humbly submitted such figures amount to puffery.”

The petitioner said: “Enrolment has been done on the back of coercive measures where people have been denied or have feared disruption in entitlements until they apply or obtain Aadhaar, something that is evident from the terms of the impugned notifications themselves, which threaten disruption of essential services by a specified date as a result of failure to enroll in Aadhaar.”

The top court had on June 9 upheld the validity of a provision of the Income Tax Act that mandated linking of Aadhaar number with PAN for filing I-T return from July 1, 2017, saying Parliament was competent to enact such a law.