On Tuesday, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of the UIDAI, was interviewed by Hindustan Times about the Supreme Court’s interim order extending the deadline for linking Aadhaar to a number of services indefinitely, and other concerns about Aadhaar. According to Mint, in the interview, Mr Pandey “attempts to clear the confusion on mandatory use of Aadhaar.”
Which is a noble endeavour, no doubt. It would be useful, however, if he could get his facts straight before attempting it, so that he doesn’t create more confusion. Or get himself into trouble for possible contempt of court.
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Blatant Misinformation on Tatkaal Passports
The most problematic statement made by Bhushan relates to whether Aadhaar is needed for applications for tatkal passports. According to him,
In case of applying for a new tatkal passport, Aadhaar number or enrolment ID with other documents is needed. To that extent, we did not see much chance in status for tatkal passports from the court’s order.
The thing is, the Supreme Court’s order does talk about tatkal passports. In fact, the chief reason why the Court passed the interim order on Tuesday, rather than later, was because the requirement of Aadhaar for tatkal passports was raised on the day.
The court’s attention was drawn to the Passport (1st Amendment) Rules, 2018, which modified the list of documents which need to be attached with an application for a passport. According to these Rules, if anyone wants to apply for a passport under the Tatkaal Scheme or out-of-turn without paying tatkaal fees, they must submit their Aadhaar details..
The Supreme Court’s order extended the deadline for submitting/linking Aadhaar for various services till the main challenge against Aadhaar is decided. As part of it, it clarifies that “the same shall also control and govern the Passports (1st Amendment) Rules, 2018.”
As mentioned above, these Rules solely deal with applications for tatkal passports, and out-of-turn applications.
This means that the Supreme Court has clearly said that until the main judgment is passed, these rules cannot be used by the authorities to insist on submission of Aadhaar details in passport applications.
Misrepresentation or Contempt?
Pandey’s comments can’t be excused as being out of context, since he has expressly addressed the contents of the order, and sought to clarify the position, in his capacity as the representative of a statutory body . To then say something which is blatantly wrong – which will make people think that if they apply for a tatkal passport before the case is decided, they will have to include their Aadhaar details – is not something which should be taken lightly.
This is very clearly a misrepresentation of the content of the Court’s instructions, and a deliberate one at that. The intentional manner in which this misinformation is being spread is made further apparent by the fact that the UIDAI’s official Twitter handle has also repeated the same error about tatkal passports.
This is hardly the first time that the UIDAI has played fast and loose with the facts. On multiple occasions, including after The Tribune’s investigation that found Aadhaar data accessible for Rs 500, they have insisted that there has never been a breach of Aadhaar data. Yet, that investigation showed that demographic information from their own databases was available and access to it being sold.
The UIDAI tried to harp on how biometric information wasn’t breached, which was irrelevant, as it is obligated under the Aadhaar Act 2016 to ensure the security and confidentiality of demographic information as well as biometric information.
In Tuesday’s interview, Pandey again reiterates that the database hasn’t been breached, and even goes so far as to say that:
In the worst case, let’s say that the biometrics has been leaked but question is, your biometric is anyway in the public domain, right? Your face, your fingerprint, everything is in public domain therefore this catastrophe that we are talking about doesn’t hold.
The UIDAI’s obligations aren’t only applicable in a catastrophe, they’re applicable at all points of time, and the CEO’s statements here are either made in ignorance, or to deliberately mislead us about how such data needs to be protected. Pandey and the UIDAI have been similarly misleading when it comes to the issue of new bank accounts, which they insist an Aadhaar enrolment ID is mandatory for – without mentioning that this needs to be provided within six months of commencement of the account.
So is his statement now about tatkal passports are just misrepresentation that needs to be called out, or does it also rise to the level of contempt of court? The Quint spoke to several legal experts who do not wish to be named, given the fact that the main Aadhaar case is ongoing.
From a purely objective viewpoint, it may be possible to consider these statements contempt of court, as they make a false statement about the content of a court order. In practical terms, however, courts will normally only consider something like this to be contempt if it is used to deny a person a benefit. For instance, if the UIDAI statement is cited by the passport authorities to refuse a tatkaal application without Aadhaar details.
Five contempt petitions have already been filed before the Supreme Court where benefits/services were wrongfully denied because of lack of Aadhaar, but the Court has unfortunately not issued notice in any of these as yet, so it is unlikely that any contempt petition would succeed against Pandey and the UIDAI for these statements.
An Inappropriate Overreach
Regardless of whether this is a matter of contempt or not, a question does need to be raised over whether or not the CEO of the UIDAI should be making statements like this at all. The rules under which Aadhaar is made mandatory for various things have nothing to do with the UIDAI. The rules for banks come from the Finance Ministry, for mobile numbers from the Department of Telecommunications, and for passports from the Ministry of External Affairs.
The UIDAI CEO is the head of a statutory authority and as a result of this position, should refrain from pronouncing how a Supreme Court order affects the rules of other ministries. Either the Attorney-General should be doing so, or appropriate representatives of those ministries. Sure, the Hindustan Times had asked him questions, but he should have been circumspect and only talked about things within his jurisdiction.
Of course, as we saw with his comment about biometrics, this is no guarantee that the UIDAI position will make much sense. One can only hope that representatives of the authority will exercise restraint in the future and ensure that they don’t propagate falsehoods based on ignorance of basic facts.
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