During the budget presentation on 29th February 2016, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced

that a bill will be introduced within a week which will provide legislative support to the
Aadhaar.Consquently on 3rd March 2016, the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other
Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 was introduced in the Parliament as a money bill by
Jaitley.

The Aadhaar Act was passed by Parliament as a money bill. Under the provisions of the
Constitution, a money bill does not mandatorily require the consent of the Rajya Sabha. If the
Lok Sabha passes a money bill, the changes suggested or objections raised by the upper house
cannot prevent it from becoming a law. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha is empowered to have the
final say in declaring a bill as money bill.

The critics argued that as the BJP lacked majority in the Rajya Sabha, it deliberately introduced
the Aadhaar Bill as money bill. Arguments have been made that the Aadhaar Act does not qualify
as a Money Bill as majority of its provisions are unrelated to government taxation and
expenditure.

Adhaar Act as per my observation seems to be a bane in the guise of a boon. There are certain
basic issues with the biometric database project with which makes it difficult for the Adhaar Act
to be beleived to be beneficial.

1. IS ADHAAR MANDATORY ?
Under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services)
Act, 2016, there is no binding on the citizens to have a UIDAI number authenticated by biometric
database, clearly meaning hat adhaar is not mandatory. But on the hand there is Section 7 of the
Aadhaar Act empowers the Centre to make it mandatory for the purposes of availing subsidies,
social welfare benefits, services etc. The government has issued several notifications using its
power under Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act to make Aadhaar number mandatory for a number of
benefits and services.

2. LINKING ADHAAR WITH OTHER DOCUMENTS

Apart from the Aadhaar Act, the NDA government also got the Finance Act, 2016 passed by
Parliament. The Finance Act, 2016 made linking of Aadhaar with PAN mandatory. Aadhaar was
also made mandatory for filing tax returns.

The mandatory linking Aadhaar with PAN under the Finance Act was held valid by the Supreme
Court. Linking Aadhaar with bank accounts, voter ID card, LPG connection card, ration card and
mobile number is also mandatory.

The question under examination is if the Aadhaar Act does not make enrolment mandatory, how
other laws can make it mandatory for availing benefits from the government.

3. AADHAAR VERSUS PRIVACY

The Supreme Court expanded the scope of the Right to Life under Article 21 to make privacy a
fundamental right. Aadhaar Act has been criticised for leaving too much scope for compromising
privacy of an individual.

The Section 29 of the Aadhaar Act states that no biometric information will be shared for any
reason whatsoever, or used for any purpose other than Aadhaar number generation and
authentication. But, Section 33 allows sharing of Aadhaar biometrics "in the interest of national
security".

The two sections speaking in contrasting measures have fanned fears about invasion into an
individual's privacy.

4. AADHAAR DATA WITH PRIVATE COMPANIES

Reliance Jio and Microsoft's Skype are two of the popular projects by the private companies that
use Aadhaar database to authenticate a subscriber. Activists have raised concerns over sensitive
privacy data being put at the risk of falling in the hands of private companies.

When the Aadhaar Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha, the government had stated that it
confined itself "only to governmental expenditure." But, Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act allows
private persons to use UID database for 'establishing the identity of an individual for any
purpose'.

5. AADHAAR AND SNOOPING THREAT

The Aadhaar Act does not prohibit law enforcement and intelligence agencies from using the UID
number to secure information from other databases across sectors including telephone records,
travel details, medical details and the like.

The absence of such a prohibitory provision allows agencies to run a computer programme across
databases to do profiling of people. Concerns have been raised that any designated agency may be
used to harass individuals.

6. QUESTION MARK OVER DATA SAFETY

More than 1.15 billion people have enrolled themselves with the UIDAI. A report by the Centre
for Internet Society in May said that more than 13 crore Aadhaar data were leaked, stolen or
compromised. Leakage of Aadhaar data of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni's family members
became national headline.

Further issuing Aadhaar to an individual is not fool-proof. A Right to Information (RTI)

application had revealed two years ago that as of June 2015, 0.03 per cent of all Aadhaar numbers
were issued to people having no pre-existing identification documents.