The Aadhaar Act 2016, that serve as the base for several government initiatives extending from tax compliance searches to the delivery of government subsidy to the poor will pass the privacy test implied in the SC verdict according to UNDAI.
Speaking about the future of these initiatives after the verdict, the CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India- Ajay Bhushan Pandey said that all the present programmes that uses the 12 – digit Aadhaar id will continue to serve their purposes.
He said that the “judgement has not said anything about the Aadhaar Act so the Aadhaar Act is a valid Act passed by the Parliament (and) is the law of the land,”.
According to him, the present deadlines of the various programmes using the Aadhaar identification including the Aadhaar- PAN linkage will continue. Government has made Aadhaar – PAN linkage mandatory for tax payers and extended the timeline for the linkage to August 31.
The UIDAI CEO asserted that there is privacy for the data collected by the government. “The data will not be shared without the consent of the person. So, there are number of privacy protection provisions inbuilt into the Aadhaar Act itself.”
There are several limitational clauses under the Act that protect the data like the use limitation, sharing limitation, purpose limitation. These limitations are in-built restrictions in the Act.
Experts point out that more safeguards need to be inducted under the Aadhaar Act as it should accommodate privacy as a fundamental right.
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