Supreme Court declares Aadhaar constitutionally valid, with some riders: Full text of the judgment

The Supreme Court Wednesday declared the Centre’s flagship Aadhaar scheme as constitutionally valid but struck down some of its provisions including its linking with bank accounts, mobile phones and school admissions. [caption id=“attachment_4690321” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. News18[/caption] A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra held that while Aadhaar would remain mandatory for filing of IT returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN), it would not be mandatory to link Aadhaar to bank accounts and the telecom service providers cannot seek its linking for mobile connections. It would not be mandatory for school admissions, as also for the examinations conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Examination, National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical entrance and the University Grants Commission. The bench also struck down the national security exception under the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. Observing that Aadhaar was meant to help the benefits reach the marginalised sections of society, it said the scheme takes into account the dignity of people not only from personal but from the community point of view as well and served the much bigger public interest. Aadhaar means unique and it is better to be unique than being best, it said. Three sets of judgements were pronounced in the matter. The first one was pronounced by Justice AK Sikri who wrote the judgement for himself, the CJI and Justice AM Khanwilkar.  Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Ashok Bhushan, who were also part of the bench, wrote their individual opinions. Here is the complete judgment.

Supreme Court judgment on Aadhaar by Firstpost on Scribd