Why it’s essential that the Supreme Court speedily hears the Aadhaar petitions
There are several conflicting accounts of precisely what transpired when senior advocate Shyam Divan made a request late in March for an early hearing of a batch of petitions that question the validity of the unique identification scheme, implemented through the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 — or the Aadhaar Act. The next morning’s newspapers each produced their own versions: in the narration of some, the court made it clear that Aadhaar ought not to be made mandatory for welfare schemes; others reported that the court had also expressly clarified that Aadhaar could, in fact, be imposed in relation to certain state directives.
“Let us take Income Tax returns. Is this a benefit? No, we don’t think so,” the Chief Justice of India, J.S. Khehar, sitting along with Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and S.K. Kaul, said, according to The Indian Express. “You can ask someone to have a bank account on the basis of Aadhaar. That is not a benefit. But if you want to make it mandatory for a poor person in a village to get his meagre pension, that could mean extending a benefit… For benefits, it (Aadhaar) cannot be pressed… for non-benefits, it can be done.”
These statements, regardless of their exact import, understandably raise legitimate concerns. After all, they were made by the CJI, barely a day after the Lok Sabha had passed amendments to the Finance Bill making Aadhaar mandatory for securing a permanent account number (PAN), and consequently for filing income tax returns. But in attempting to comprehend the significance of these remarks, we must be careful not to ascribe any excessive value to them; indeed, there’s practically no utility to be gained in trying to put different news reports together to try to ascertain what the CJI may have really meant. For these statements were just oral ripostes, which don’t bear the force of a judicial order.
Point of no return
What was more telling, however — and ultimately more damaging — about this entire episode was the result: the denial of Mr. Divan’s plea for a speedy inquiry into the validity of Aadhaar. It is now entirely likely that by the time the court gets around to hearing the challenge, the government will render Aadhaar a fait accompli, with its destiny, in this case, having been sealed by successive CJIs who have failed to so much as constitute a bench to hear the petitions. This lapse also highlights a deeper malaise in our judicial structure: where one person, the CJI, as the sole master of the Supreme Court’s roster, decides the composition of benches, and, as a result, wields enormous administrative power over which cases get heard and which cases get placed on a seemingly never-ending back burner.
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