The issue of the right to privacy took an interesting turn on Tuesday after the Gujarat Government filed an application claiming that such privilege was “absolute”. This was in sharp contrast to a stand taken by the Centre in the past that the right to privacy was not a Fundamental Right, which had forced the Supreme Court to refer the matter to a Constitution Bench.
However on Tuesday, the Centre did not oppose the stand taken by the Gujarat Government, giving a clear indication of a rethink over this sensitive policy issue.
The Constitution Bench is presently seized with a batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar card scheme on the ground that it violates privacy.
On Tuesday, the previous three-judge Bench that referred the matter to the Constitution Bench took up separate applications filed by the Centre and Gujarat to allow Aadhaar cards for availing various social benefit programmes apart from lPG and PDS schemes.
Appearing for the Gujarat Government, senior advocate Harish Salve said, “There is full right to privacy in the country. As a law student I feel 2015 is very late in the day to argue there is no right to privacy.”
To everybody’s surprise, this went unopposed by Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pinky Anand, who represented the Centre on behalf of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UID).
Noticing the changed approach of the Centre on right to privacy, the Bench of Justices J Chelameswar, SA Bobde and C Nagappan remarked, “If this position was taken on day one, we would not have been required to refer this question to a larger Bench.”
The court even raised doubts that having referred the petitions to a Constitution Bench, it could still entertain the application for passing interim orders.
The conflicting positions also caused deep unrest among the petitioners who had throughout maintained that privacy as a Fundamental Right cannot be doubted after several judgements of the SC established that privacy was inherent in right to life and personal liberty contained in Article 21.
Since the petitioners had not received either the application of the Centre or Gujarat, the Bench posted the matter for hearing next Tuesday.
Besides, several other applications were filed by SEBI, Reserve Bank of India and Jharkhand Government for modifying the August 11 order of the apex court restricting the use of Aadhaar cards to lPG and PDS scheme alone.
The Centre in its application said that the court order did not allow citizens to avail of several social welfare schemes, hassle free banking and financial transactions to which they voluntarily consented. RBI claimed that security market required banks to rely on Aadhaar information to process requests of consumers, for which the order needs modification.
The Aadhaar coverage stood at 91.68 crore and all facilities such as driving licence, Pan Card, passport, ration card, election I-card were also linked through Aadhaar, which in the case of some citizens is their only identity proof. The Centre made out a case that Aadhaar helped Government authorities to weed out bogus beneficiaries, essential for successful implementation of schemes such a MNREGA.