New Delhi: Even as the Congress on Wednesday welcomed the Supreme Court verdict on Aadhaar, it said that the judgement “opens the door for several challenges to the Speaker’s arbitrary decisions” in future.
Taking a leaf out of Justice D.Y. Chadrachud’s dissenting observations, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said, “One important part of the judgement to be noted is that if in future a Lok Sabha Speaker declared a bill as money bill, (as was the case in the Aadhaar Act), then the court can review and revert such a bill.”
That the Aadhaar Act was introduced by the Speaker as a money bill before being passed was widely objected to by many civil society groups as they viewed such a route as a subversion of parliamentary process. Now with Justice Chandrachud declaring that Aadhaar was clearly not a money bill, Sibal said the party will approach a seven-judge bench to consider the verdict again to rule on the Speaker’s powers.
The Congress leader said, “While four learned judges of the Supreme Court have upheld the classification of the Act as a ‘Money Bill’, Justice Chandrachud has dissented calling it a ‘debasement of the democratic structure’ which renders the Act an ‘illegality’. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has also held that passage of bills in such a manner by the government is a way of undermining the role of parliament and parliamentarians.”
Sibal said that such an observation was a “scathing indictment of this government’s clandestine and dishonest approach to its parliamentary responsibilities”.
He added, “The majority (in the five-judge bench) has unanimously agreed that the decisions of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha can be subject to judicial review. This is the very first time that a constitutional bench has held so. This marks the beginning of a new era of accountability for the Speaker, who so far was beyond reproach. The Supreme Court has upheld the arguments put forth by the Congress party in this regard.”
A screengrab of an advertisement for Aadhaar. Credit: YouTube
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court declared the Centre’s flagship Aadhaar scheme constitutionally valid but put several checks on the government, which wanted Aadhaar registration as a pre-condition for all individuals who wanted to avail of essential services.
The Congress, in this context, termed the verdict as “slap on the face of BJP” and welcomed the SC bench’s decision to strike down Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which allows not only the State but also any “body, corporate or person” or private entity to demand an Aadhaar.
“This (striking down Section 57) is important because the BJP government was pushing its agenda of mass convergence through the intimidation of private companies which had begun insisting on Aadhaar details,” Sibal added.
While welcoming the verdict, the senior Congress leader said, “Now, Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for mobile phones and bank linking. The Congress led UPA’s vision of Aadhaar was always voluntary and never mandatory. This is an endorsement of the UPA’s vision for Aadhar and a rejection of the NDA’s clumsy attempt to gather metadata on its citizens without any rationale.”
Attacking the BJP, the Congress leader said that the “insensitive” BJP government had been insisting on Aadhaar for “schemes that targeted the poorest of the poor”. “However, the judgement upheld the arguments of the Congress and said that nobody shall be denied entitlements or disqualified from the benefit of schemes for the absence of an Aadhaar number.”
Sibal said that as a result of BJP’s obduracy, “close to 25 indigent individuals died due to starvation from denial of benefits in the last four years. Compare this to the UPA’s Aadhaar which never penalied/ punished those who did not possess an Aadhaar.”
He highlighted the fact that it was the UPA which introduced the Aadhaar, which the BJP had then opposed. However, Sibal added that there were fundamental differences between how the BJP and the Congress conceptualised Aadhaar. “The Congress party stands for an Aadhaar which is voluntary and backed by a valid law. It stands for an Aadhaar which provides a genuinely stable, secure and viable alternative to existing forms of identification aimed at making it the most important tool for delivery of benefits rather than invasion of privacy.”
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