The Supreme Court on Tuesday suggested that the Central Government’s Unique Identification Number Project could come handy in trapping illegal migrants, who currently add up to a whopping 10 million of the population.
Introducing the angle of national security for the first time in the debate over allowing the Government to mandatorily link Aadhaar cards with Government schemes and services, the bench of Justices BS Chauhan, J Chelameswar and MY Eqbal said, “As on date, this illegal migration continues unabated. But now - with Aadhaar - we have the privilege to identify an illegal migrant.”
The problem, witnessed mostly in North-Eastern States, was espoused by Justice Chelameswar, who was Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court during 2007-10. “According to the records in this court, there are about 10 million illegal migrants in the country,” the bench said.
However, as per an early direction, the court had ordered that tribunals under the Foreigners Act had to identify illegal migrants. “Whenever notice is issued, they say our name is in the electoral list. Assuming each tribunal completes one case a day, it will take two centuries to identify them. Would it not be in the interest of society that this process continues,” the bench said.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan who appeared for the PIl petitioners, comprising civil society members and a former judge of Karnataka High Court said, “It is our apprehension that this UID will be given to the 10 million migrants also and it may not be confined to citizens only.”
But the bench was not amused. “Can apprehension of misuse be a ground for challenge…let them fine-tune this programme,” the court added.
The court emphasised that its interim order, passed earlier, only restrained the Centre from forcing anyone to get Aadhaar to avail of Government schemes.
“What if somebody wants the benefits and is willing to give all the information. How can we stop it,” the bench said. It referred to a colonial era law that required every Indian child born between 1947 and 1952 to furnish finger prints as a proof of identification.
Even malls engage security men who invade privacy of individuals for their security. Forced to draw this comparison, the bench said, “If private malls search your pockets for their safety we surrender. But for security of nation, we say this (collection of biometrics under Aadhaar) is unconstitutional. We fail to understand.”
The petitioner pointed out that states where marriages and property could be registered only if you had Aadhaar. Data stored under Aadhaar infringed citizens’ privacy and should not remain in public domain, Divan argued. But the bench felt that so long as purpose of data is identified, the question of destroying it won’t arise.