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

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Monday rebuffed political parties’ clamour for a directive to EC to accept Aadhaar card as standalone proof of citizenship to enable people to enroll in the Bihar voter list prepared after special intensive revision (SIR) and said the status of Aadhaar cannot be enhanced beyond what has been laid down in the law.A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, which had earlier said Aadhaar could be an identity document along with other documents specified by EC for enrolment in the voter list, said on Monday: “Aadhaar will be one of the documents for verification”.When RJD counsel Prashant Bhushan said EC is not accepting Aadhaar as a standalone proof of identity for the 65 lakh names deleted from the draft voter list despite the court’s orders, the bench said, “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 said, “An Aadhaar number also does not, by itself, constitute a conferment of a right of citizenship, or domicile”.When counsels for other petitioners, including political parties, joined in the pitch to elevate Aadhaar from a biometric proof of identity to proof of one’s citizenship for registration as a voter, the bench asked, “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, appearing for EC, said, “The repeated pleadings for Aadhaar is because there are certain districts in Bihar where Aadhaar saturation is 140%”, implying large-scale prevalence of bogus identity cards.The Centre repeatedly highlighted how illegal Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingyas have managed to fraudulently obtain Aadhaar cards in some states.The bench told the political parties to activate their grassroots-level workers and booth level agents to identify people who have been wrongly deleted from the draft voters list and help them file claims before the booth level officers of Election Commission to get their names included in the final voter list.