NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday hailed the Supreme Court’s (SC) Aadhaar verdict, saying that the unique identification was helping the government save Rs 90,000 crore each year.
“It is a historic judgement and the whole concept of unique identity number that has been accepted after judicial review is an extremely welcome decision.
There are now 122 crore people in India who have Aadhaar cards and our estimation is that by identifying beneficiaries of government schemes and ensuring that there are no fake or duplicate or non-existent beneficiaries, we are already saving Rs 90,000 crore every year,” Jaitley said during the Cabinet briefing.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi too hailed the verdict and stated that the SC had supported his party’s vision of India, while Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee claimed that the verdict vindicated the party’s stand against linking Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones.
“For Congress, Aadhaar was an instrument of empowerment. For the BJP, Aadhaar is a tool of surveillance and oppression,” Gandhi tweeted. The Congress said Aadhaar upheld the rights of the marginalised and ensured that the unique ID number given to the marginalized was the basis of entitlement under various public distribution schemes of the government.
“We welcome the judgment to the extent that it strikes down the right of the private sector to collect Aadhaar numbers. Therefore, neither banks now are entitled to collect the Aadhaar number nor are telecom companies entitled to collect it or the private sector in any other way intended to collect the Aadhar because I think the interest of the government was to collect all the Aadhar through the private sector and then get it transferred to itself so that it could misuse it. I think the SC has nipped that mischief in the bud,” Congress spokesperson Kapil Sibal said.
The Congress also said it was happy about the verdict on the grounds of national security. Noting that Section 47; Section 57 and Section 33 too have been struck down as unconstitutional, the Congress said there were certain grey areas relate to those who are marginalized and who are entitled to those entitlements.
#Modigivebackmydata trends on twitter
Soon after the SC delivered its verdict, the Congress took to Twitter to hail the decision, and create the hashtag #ModiGiveBackMyData. “PM Modi misused public data & created a surveillance state through #Aadhar. Today he must answer for this violation of our privacy & ensure we get our data back,” the Congress said in a tweet.