Central government plans to link the aadhaar card to the Digital India initiative and services like banking and telecom suffered a setback when the Supreme Court refused to dilute its earlier order, which allowed the card to be used only for the specific purpose of LPG subsidy and the public distribution system. The judges made it quite clear that until the larger issue of privacy was settled it could not alter its August 11 order. A constitutional bench, as an when it is set up, will decide on whether the right to privacy is a fundamental right and if collection of biometric data from citizens violated it. The unique identification system was developed by UPA to curb duplication of beneficiaries in government schemes and enable citizens to avail services without having to produce a plethora of documents. There is a clear upside to the card but questions over the privacy need to be sorted out. The Centre has two choices -- wait for the privacy issue to be sorted out by a constitutional bench, which could take some time or become pro-active and create a legal framework with sufficient safeguards to prevent misuse by government agencies. For quicker resolution of the issue, it must choose the latter route.
