The court has placed strict restrictions on the scope of the project while striking down contentious provisions of the Aadhaar Act.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday declared the Aadhaar programme and the Aadhaar Act 2016 to be constitutional, but placed strict limitations on the scope of the project while striking down several contentious provisions of the legislation including clauses that allowed sharing of data for national security purposes and the usage of the biometric authentication system by private corporations.
In a three-judge majority order, the court also read down the five-year rule for archival storage of transaction logs and also struck down any storage of metadata with regard to Aadhaar authentication.
Of the five judge-bench that delivered the verdict, three justices delivered separate opinions. Justice A.K. Sikri delivered the majority opinion, with Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar concurring with him.
In his majority opinion, Justice Sikri noted that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory and linked to bank accounts, mobile phone connections and a number of education schemes. In particular, the judge called out the changes to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), which laid the foundation for mandatory Aadhaar-bank linking, as “unconstitutional” and noted that it did not satisfy the test of proportionality.
However, Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act has been upheld, which means that Aadhaar-linking will be required while filing income-tax returns.
Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice Ashok Bhushan have written separate opinions, with the former having partially dissented on a number of points.
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