SC says Aadhaar's goal was 'inclusion' of marginalized section

The Supreme Court Wednesday said the aim behind the launching of the Aadhaar scheme was "inclusion" of the marginalized section of society and the project cannot be crucified on the possibility of failure in authentication.

The top court said it was conscious of the probability of failure in Aadhar's authentication process and it would be appropriate if a suitable provision was made in the regulations for establishing an identity by alternate means in such situations.

Referring to the submission of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which claimed that biometric accuracy of Aadhaar was 99.76 percent, the court said if the project is shelved, 99.76 percent beneficiaries are going to suffer which would lead to their exclusion.

"The Authority has claimed that biometric accuracy is 99.76 percent and the petitioners have also proceeded on that basis. In this scenario, if the Aadhaar project is shelved, 99.76 percent of beneficiaries are going to suffer. Would it not lead to their exclusion?

"It will amount to throwing the baby out of the hot water along with the water. In the name of 0.232 per cent failure (which can in any case be remedied), should we revert to the pre-Aadhaar stage with a system of leakages, pilferages and corruption in the implementation of welfare schemes meant for marginalised section of the society, the full fruits thereof were not reaching to such people," the court said.

Justice A K Sikri, writing the judgment for the CJI, himself and Justice A M Khanwilkar, said the entire aim behind launching this programme was the "inclusion" of the deserving persons who needed to get such benefits.

"When it is serving a much larger purpose by reaching hundreds of millions of deserving persons, it cannot be crucified on the unproven plea of exclusion of some. "However, what we are emphasizing is that remedy is to plug the loopholes, rather than ax a project aimed for the welfare of large section of the society. Obviously, in order to address the failures of authentication, the remedy is to adopt alternative methods for identifying such persons, after finding the causes of failure in their cases," it said.