Professor Nagarjuna G., an activist for Software Freedom and Privacy and petitioner in the Aadhaar case, on Wednesday said, “I am not happy with the judgment as it gives a lot of power to the government.”
After the Supreme Court pronounced its judgment in the case, Prof. Nagarjuna said, “I filed the petition in 2011 and after seven years I get this. Justice delayed is justice denied. Information today has monetary value because of which the leakages take place. So the greater the linkages the greater the leakages. With the Aadhaar number coming in, one will easily be identified and profiled.”
Prof. Nagarjuna, who is also on the board of Software Freedom Law Centre of India, said according to the judgment, private companies cannot ask for the Aadhaar number. He said, “I don’t have the number. So last year, I could not file my income tax returns. This year, I could do it without a High Court order. I had to tell the court that I am a tax paying citizen so I should be allowed to file my returns without Aadhaar. Now, I can have a bank account without Aadhaar, but I have to link it to the PAN card and cannot file my returns without it. So this is indirectly making Aadhaar mandatory.”
He said, in a democracy, one is supposed to get an identity through social and cultural practices not by any institutional identity. “If you want to apply for an Aadhaar card, you need some other identity. So how many identities do you eventually need,” he said.
Explaining the need for the number, he said, “This instrument has been brought for business interests and to create a surveillance to facilitate linkages which is not acceptable. We can’t make the government so powerful, we have to weaken the centralisation of the government. That is the way democracy works.”
He said he would challenge the judgment, “We welcome the dissent by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. I think there is scope to explore the legal remedies and challenge the judgment. Otherwise, we will have to convince the Parliament to step in.”
