The petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhar scheme continued in the Supreme Court, where the 5 Judge Bench expressed its concerns over the breach of the data during the period of 2009 to 2016.

The Hon’ble Bench, while responding to the submissions made by the Counsel on behalf of the petitioners, stated that the subsequent enactment of Aadhaar Act in 2016 would not be able to cure the “complete invasion of privacy” which occurred in the pre-statute years of the Aadhaar scheme.

As stated by Hon’ble Justice DY Chandrachud, “Our (Privacy) judgement said that there has to be a law. They enacted a law to take away the basis of the argument. The absence of a law can be cured, but there may be other issues like whether the data collected (earlier) had the same statutory safeguards. What will happen in case of breach?”

He went on to say that, “There is no embargo on the government to cure the deficiency of absence of law by enacting a legislation subsequently. A breach because of the absence of law can be cured by enacting a law. But, on the other hand, if there are other breaches on fundamental rights, we have to see whether this curative law (Aadhaar Act) can cure those breaches.”

While the counsel submitted that “governments come and go and we do not know who will inherit this database even if we don’t impute any malice to this government but the personal information of citizens cannot be accessed by the government without any authority of law and moreover, in the present case, these information can be shared with body corporate, the Bench observed the lack of a cue for the same.

The proceedings remained inconclusive and are to be resumed tomorrow.