With the Centre refusing to concede right to privacy as a fundamental right, the Supreme Court on Thursday expressed concerns over the security of personal data collected by the Centre as part of Aadhaar enrollment programme.
The nine-judge Bench of the apex court, hearing arguments on the right to privacy being a fundamental right, told Attorney General KK Venugopal that the Government is duty-bound to evolve a “robust” mechanism to protect all information stored with it irrespective of whether privacy exists as a fundamental right or not.
With the Unique Identification Authority or Aadhaar already registering close to 112 crore enrollments, the concern expressed by the Bench comprising Chief Justice JS Khehar, Justices J Chelameswar, SA Bobde, RK Agarwal, RF Nariman, AM Sapre, DY Chandrachud, SK Kaul and S Abdul Nazeer was relevant.
The Bench asked Venugopal, “Do you have a robust mechanism to ensure that whatever information stored with you in the public sphere is protected.” The query came after A-G submitted that citizens cannot claim informational privacy if such a claim can result in defeating basic fundamental rights of another set of citizens.
Justice Chandrachud said, “The Centre must concede to put in a robust mechanism to protect data. If you argue privacy is not a fundamental right; then it cannot be said that Centre is not responsible to protect such data…Nobody has a problem to share personal data with the State. But we have a problem if a third party builds on that platform provided by Centre.”
A-G read out Regulations under the Aadhaar Act 2016 that provides stringent safeguards to protect information of citizens and assured Court that the Act prohibits sharing of information.
The Maharashtra Government through senior advocate CA Sundaram supported the Centre’s stand and pointed out how the Supreme Court decision recognising privacy as fundamental right was based on a wrong reading of a 1975 decision, which all along failed to get noticed.