SC: Law may cure Aadhaar breach

New Delhi, February 21 

The Supreme Court today said the alleged defect that citizens’ biometric details under the Aadhaar scheme were being collected without any law, could be cured by subsequently bringing a statute.

A five-judge constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, however, asked what the position will be with regard to breach, if any, that could have taken place between 2009, when the Aadhaar scheme was launched, and 2016 when the enabling law came into force.

The Bench said the Centre came out with the law in 2016 to negate the objection that it was collecting data since 2009 without any authorisation, but the issue which needed consideration was what will happen if the data collected earlier, have been compromised.

“Our (Privacy) judgment said there has to be a law. They enacted a law to take away the basis of the argument. The absence of a law can be cured, but there may be other issues like whether the data collected (earlier) had the same statutory safeguards. What will happen in case of breach,” the Bench, also comprising Justices AK Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said.

The Bench is hearing a clutch of petitions including one filed by former High Court judge Justice K S Puttaswamy challenging the constitutional validity of the Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme and its enabling 2016 Act.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for the former judge, said the law cannot cure defects like invasion of fundamental rights of citizens and invasion of privacy in this case was “complete once you unlawfully collected information. All this cannot be cured.” He said the State was making a “moral judgment on the poorest of the poor in saying they make ghost cards”. — PTI