Withdraw orders that make Aadhaar card mandatory: Supreme Court

There has been widespread criticism that the UIDAI was compromising the privacy of Indians by giving the contracts for procuring bio-metric information about individuals to private companies.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday directed the union government to withdraw all its orders that makes the Aadhaar card mandatory for availing various welfare schemes.

Hearing petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar card, the Supreme Court further asked the Unique Identification Authority of India not share any information about an Aadhaar card with any government agency without permission of the card holder.

The bench comprising of Justices BS Chauhan and SA Bobde was told that the 'biometrics' on which the project is based are unreliable and untested as public funds were being siphoned off to private enterprises without much validation, CNN-IBN reported.

There has been widespread criticism that the UIDAI was compromising the privacy of Indians by giving the contracts for procuring bio-metric information about individuals to private companies.

The UIDAI is a government agency responsible for implementing the Aadhaar scheme.

The agency was established in February 2009 and owns and operates the Unique Identification Number database.

Earlier in 2013, the apex court had ruled that Aadhaar card is not mandatory for an Indian citizen to avail essential services.

576 million Aadhaar cards issued

A total of 576.16 million Aadhaar cards have been issued till Jan 31, with Maharashtra topping the list with 82.99 million beneficiaries, the government informed the Lok Sabha Wednesday.

Andhra Pradesh (79.06 million) and Tamil Nadu (44.33 million) were placed in the second and third spots, Minister of State for Planning Rajeev Shukla said in a written statement.

They were followed by Madhya Pradesh (42.44 million), Karnataka (41.76 million), Rajasthan (38.33 million), West Bengal (34.92 million), Kerala (30.44 million), Gujarat (26.43 million) and Jharkhand (25.82 million).

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