Aadhaar may cause death of citizens' civil rights, Supreme Court told

A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is hearing the matter related to the constitutional validity of linking Aadhaar card to a number of government schemes.

NEW DELHI: During the hearing of the matter related to the constitutional validity of linking Aadhaar card to a number of government schemes, the Supreme Court was on Wednesday told that sharing Aadhaar data may cause the death of the civil rights of citizens.

"Aadhaar may cause death of citizens' civil rights. A people's Constitution is being sought to be converted into a State's Constitution," senior Supreme Court lawyer Shyam Divan, appearing for petitioners said. 

A five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is hearing the matter related to the constitutional validity of Aadhaar.

The five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and four other judges Justices AM Khanwilkar, Adarsh Kumar Sikri, D.Y.Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan is hearing a number of petitions filed challenging the validity of the identification number.

There have been many doubts regarding the possibility of leakage of data leading to a breach in the privacy of people. The top court has also received petitions regarding the linkage of this 12-digit number with mobile phones, bank accounts and so on, the last date for which was extended to March 31 this year.

While data breach has been widely debated in the recent past, the government had refuted all claims of the same.

Recently, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) decided to enable 'Face Authentication' infusion mode on registered devices by July 1, so that people facing difficulty in other existing modes of verification such as fingerprints, iris, and one-time-password (OTP) could easily authenticate.