'Aadhaar may cause death of citizens' civil rights'

The Aadhaar card may cause the death of citizens’ civil rights, senior lawyer Shyam Divan said before a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court, on Wednesday.

In the ongoing hearing of the matter related to the constitutional validity of linking Aadhaar card to a number of government schemes, Divan who is appearing for the petitioners, said that a people’s constitution was being converted into a state’s Constitution and it was incorrect to take people’s biometric data for Aadhaar.

The bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and four other judges Justices AM Khanwilkar, Adarsh Kumar Sikri, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, was hearing a number of petitions challenging the validity of the identification system.

Since the inception of the Aadhaar card, its validity and possible leakages of data have surfaced time and again. The apex 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.

Recently, the Unique Identification Authority of India decided to enable ‘Face Authentication’ in fusion 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 could easily authenticate.