Review Petition filed against Supreme Court’s Aadhaar judgment

A petition has been filed seeking a review of the Supreme Court’s judgment in Justice KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India, by which the Aadhaar scheme was held to be constitutionally valid..Filed by Imtiyaz Ali Palsaniya, the petition challenges only those aspects of the Aadhaar scheme and Act that were held to be constitutionally sound by a 4:1 majority of the five-judge Bench that heard the case..The petitioner claims that he had filed two impleadment applications in the matter, and the Court had failed to consider the grounds raised in the same..Among the grounds raised in the review petition is that the Court did not consider whether Section 139AA of the Aadhaar Act, which mandates Aadhaar-PAN linkage, is in direct contravention of Section 2(k) of the Act. S. 2(k) specifically prohibits any person from parting with any information which is pertaining to “race, religion, caste, tribe, ethnicity, language, record of entitlements, income or medical history”” of a person. The petition states,.“The provision prayed to be reviewed however would force citizens to give away such information as relating to their ‘income’ and ‘entitlements’, thereby violating Section 2(k) of Aadhaar Act, 2016. This aspect has nowhere been discussed either in the judgment prayed to be reviewed, nor has it been dealt with in the matter of Binoy Viswam & Others v. Union of India & Ors….…Both these judgments have failed to account that when there is an express prohibition in the plain language of the statute itself, then it must be given effect to, and on this ground alone, Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, 1961 ought to have been struck down. The judgment under review has not considered this vital aspect, nor has it clarified on the fate of this Proviso, once the same was stayed by way of an earlier pronouncement in Binoy Viswam.”.It is also contended that a particular aspect of Aadhaar-PAN linkage has not been considered by the Court. As per the Supreme Court, the state’s enforcement of Aadhaar should be towards serving either a benefit, a subsidy or a service..“Filing of Income Tax Returns under Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act, 1961 does not fall within either of the three descriptions, since filing of Income Tax is a statutory mandate, the violation of which could result in serious penalty. It is neither a benefit, subsidy or service.”.Further, it is noted that the information of citizens was already in the hands of private players, even before the Aadhaar Act was passed in 2016. At that time, the petition states, there was no law to protect the privacy of individuals who gave up their sensitive personal data..Another point raised is that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) gave retrospective validity to the contracts handed to private agencies before the Aadhaar Act came into existence. Section 23(3) empowers the UIDAI to enter into MoUs with agencies to collect and store information..“It is submitted that if these MoU’s are in sheer abrogation of the Right to Privacy, then none of the statutory protections as envisaged under the Aadhaar Act, 2016 could come to the rescue of UIDAI, since no statutory provision could cure a retrospective breach of a constitutional right.”.Moreover, the judgment has not given the choice to citizens to opt out from providing Aadhaar details in such cases. The petition states that the Court has not given any direction to various private players or corporate bodies to delete such data. Therefore, telecom providers, schools, colleges, insurance companies etc, continue to retain the data..Yet another issue raised is that the judgment has also not considered the crucial distinction between a “citizen” and a “resident”..“There is no way to identify the citizens from residents who are not citizens, as Aadhar has been the singular tool to dilute the said distinction. Needless to say, all the benefits, subsidies or services that are solely the Rights of the citizen, are being given away to residents who are not citizens.”.The petition has been filed by Advocate Pallavi Pratap and drawn by Advocate Nipun Saxena..In September this year, the Court had upheld the validity of the Aadhaar scheme, while striking down some provisions of the Act. The judgment was pronounced by a Bench of then Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AK Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan. Justice Chandrachud dissented from the majority..Read the petition: