Aadhaar can’t be standalone proof of citizenship, says SC | India News

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Monday rebuffed political events’ clamour for a directive to EC to simply accept Aadhaar card as standalone proof of citizenship to allow folks to enroll within the Bihar voter record ready after particular intensive revision (SIR) and mentioned the standing of Aadhaar can not be enhanced past what has been laid down within the legislation.A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, which had earlier mentioned Aadhaar might be an id doc together with different paperwork specified by EC for enrolment within the voter record, mentioned on Monday: “Aadhaar will be one of the documents for verification”.When RJD counsel Prashant Bhushan mentioned EC shouldn’t be accepting Aadhaar as a standalone proof of id for the 65 lakh names deleted from the draft voter record regardless of the court docket’s orders, the bench mentioned, “We cannot enhance the status of Aadhaar beyond what is ascribed to it by the Aadhaar Act. We can also not go beyond what was said by a five-judge bench in Puttaswamy judgment while upholding Aadhaar”.Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act says: “The Aadhaar number or the authentication thereof shall not, by itself, confer any right of, or be proof of, citizenship or domicile in respect of an Aadhaar number holder.”In the Sept 2018 Puttaswamy case judgment, a five-judge bench of SC had mentioned, “An Aadhaar number also does not, by itself, constitute a conferment of a right of citizenship, or domicile”.When counsels for different petitioners, together with political events, joined within the pitch to raise Aadhaar from a biometric proof of id to proof of one’s citizenship for registration as a voter, the bench requested, “Why is there so much of emphasis on Aadhaar? We will not pass an order that Aadhaar is the final proof of citizenship”.Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, showing for EC, mentioned, “The repeated pleadings for Aadhaar is because there are certain districts in Bihar where Aadhaar saturation is 140%”, implying large-scale prevalence of bogus id playing cards.The Centre repeatedly highlighted how unlawful Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingyas have managed to fraudulently receive Aadhaar playing cards in some states.The bench advised the political events to activate their grassroots-level employees and sales space stage brokers to establish individuals who have been wrongly deleted from the draft voters record and assist them file claims earlier than the sales space stage officers of Election Commission to get their names included within the last voter record.