Dr. Asangba Tzüdir
The Government’s passage of the Aadhaar Bill in complete disregard of even basic parliamentary procedures and in subversion of an ongoing judicial process puts at risk a number of constitutional rights and liberties of citizens. - Prof. R. Ramakumar, TISS, Mumbai
When PM Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, he said of the AADHAAR Card project under UPA led government in 2013, “CONGRESSMEN ARE DANCING AS IF [AADHAAR] was a herb for all cures”(Frontline, April 15, 2016, p. 4) and questioning how much money was spent on the project and who had benefited from it. Today, as Prime Minister, he seems to have realized the herbal value by passing the Aadhaar Bill in Lok Sabha most surprisingly as a money Bill. The bill has been passed in a manner most unconstitutional. Firstly, in passing the Bill, parliamentary procedures were disregarded besides subverting an ongoing judicial process; secondly, the Bill has provisions that puts at risk and offers no protection to a number of constitutional rights and liberties of citizens.
One may wonder why it was introduced as a money Bill? A money Bill is not introduced in both the houses of parliament. It is introduced only in Lok Sabha and from there it is transferred to the Upper House Rajya Sabha with a certificate from the Speaker that it is a money Bill. Rajya Sabha cannot make amendments to the Bill but can only recommend the amendments to the Lok Sabha. Further, from Rajya Sabha, if the Bill is not routed back to Lok Sabha within 14 days, it may be considered as passed by both the Houses of Parliament. And the NDA led government, not having a majority in Rajya Sabha wanted to settle it in the Lok Sabha itself by converting Aadhaar Bill into a money Bill. So, now the question is whether Aadhaar Bill can be considered as a money Bill? Under Article 110 (1) of the Constitution, a Bill is deemed to be a money Bill if it contains provisions dealing with six specific matters [Article 110 (1)(a) to (1)(f)] broadly related to imposing, abolishing or regulating a tax; regulating government borrowings; the Consolidated and Contingency Funds of India. While the Bill does, in part, deal with appropriation of money from the consolidated Fund of India, its primary outcome is the potential violation of constitutional rights. Now if any question arises whether a bill is a money Bill or not, article 110(3) provides that, “the decision of the Speaker of the House of the people thereon shall be final.”
The Aadhaar legislation has been passed by parliament even as a bench of the Supreme Court is considering a challenge on the grounds that it violates the right to privacy. In August 2015, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark order, firstly, referring to a larger constitutional bench the question of whether privacy is a fundamental right; and secondly, it ruled that Aadhaar is not mandatory. In response, the government told the Supreme Court that privacy was not a fundamental right and therefore Aadhaar did not violate any fundamental right. This is an outright trespassing of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution that relates to ‘protection of life and personal liberty.’ The Court too said that Aadhaar should not be made mandatory until the ruling of the constitutional bench. However, the current Bill has made Aadhaar mandatory thereby subverting an ongoing judicial process and also making a mockery of Indian Democracy and the legal system.
A brief recap, Aadhaar program was launched in 2009 with the main objective to give universal identity to every resident Indian. But with its importance unclear to the public, there were apprehensions and privacy concerns since it required imprinting and registering ones eyes and fingerprints while applying for the card. Any Aadhaar card holder is being identified with a 12 digit Unique identification number that is being linked in offering Aadhaar based Direct Benefit Transfer (LPG subsidy); Jan Dhan Yojana to open bank account; avail passport in ten days; digital locker; voter card linking; monthly pension; provident fund etc.
Coming to its information storage system, the unique number is linked to one’s personal information and stored in a ‘silo’ and the information can be converged making it susceptible. In such cases of convergence, any profile of a person can be created by linking it with the information of a person and keep tracking them. In doing so, one’s body becomes a ‘biobody’ or for that matter, a ‘biopolitical’ body of access and intrusion into privacy. Thereby, constituting an assault on a very basic freedom – intrusion into privacy. Sunil Abraham, Exec. Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore says that, “the Aadhaar project’s technological design is an unmitigated disaster and no amount of legal fixes in the Act will make it any better.” An instance, when it comes to biometric identification, a gummy finger can fool a biometric scanner by using glue and a candle. Besides, a study commissioned by the Andhra Pradesh Civil Supplies Department in 2015 to find out why almost one-fourth of those entitled to rations had not collected their rations found fingerprint authentication failure in 290 out of 790 cardholders and Aadhaar mismatch in 93 instances. This is in fact quite a telling instance.
Beyond the subsidies, the Aadhaar enables individual profiling which sets a dangerous precedent on the issue of privacy; so do the authentication failure with the Unique number. But what is more concerning is that, the mode of operation by which the Aadhaar Bill was introduced will have serious repercussions on the future of Indian democracy.
In the context of Nagaland too, the suggestion by ACAUT to link up E-Roll with Aadhaar in cleaning the bogus, double entries and the inflated figures in the E-Roll sounds reasonable but may prove counterproductive because the leakages within Aadhaar is not really plugged.
(Dr. Asangba Tzüdir is Editor with Heritage Publishing House. He writes a weekly guest editorial for the Morung Express. Comments can be mailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
