Archives for the tag Supreme Court
Apar GuptaWas the Aadhaar judgement a pyrrhic victory on the issue of money bills?
Methods of interpretation
Dialling the wrong number
Dialling The Wrong Number
Shortly after the Supreme Court declared privacy to be a fundamental right, most cellphone users received a message from their telecom operators which seemed to negate it. The message threatened disconnection of cellphone connections if a user failed to link their Aadhaar. These messages and calls have only increased in frequency. This re-verification requires a user to visit a telecom service centre, undergo biometric authentication by putting their fingerprints on an authentication device, and hope that the details in the Aadhaar database match with their cellular connection.
Return of the brooding spirit of the law
Privacy is a solution
Data is not oil, it is power
Project of defiance
One reason for the controversy surrounding the Aadhaar project is the pending litigation against it in the Supreme Court. The cases draw on substantive critiques, including exclusion and deprivation caused by the usage of Aadhaar in provisioning essential services such as the PDS and MGNREGA, breaches of individual privacy and threats to national and individual security in the way the project has been conceived and implemented. Such concerns are not pure policy matters but interact with constitutionally protected fundamental rights, including Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.