Bengaluru man moves Supreme Court for bio-metric details of late father from UIDAI

Bengaluru: In a peculiar case, a human resources manager from Bengaluru on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the UIDAI to hand him back the biometric data of his late father collected for Aadhaar card.

Santosh Min B said he wanted the biometric details as these would be of no use for the UIDAI since his father was dead now and there were also chances of their misuse and abuse.

Santosh, who works with an ayurvedic clinic, told the apex court that his father died after he felt insulted while filling a life certificate at a provident fund office in Bengaluru, as his authentication by biometrics failed due to old age and cataract surgery of his eyes.

A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra gave two minutes’ time to Santosh Min B to argue his case in which he said that the Aadhaar scheme is like an “undeclared emergency”.

“This court may direct the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to hand over my dad’s biometric in a printed form so that I can keep it for posterity,” he told the bench also comprising justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.

He also sought to abolish the Aadhaar scheme and said that “his father had passed away on December 31, 2016, the dark day in our history, as on that day demonetisation ended”.

The bench interrupted him and said, “We will not allow you to give any speech. If you want you can argue on question of law, but you can’t be allowed to give a speech.”

Santosh, who appeared in person before the court, said that he had received a half-written letter of his father N Bhanu Vikaraman for the prime minister in January this year.

In the letter, his father had written about the “harassment” a sick and elderly person faces during filling a life certificate form at provident fund offices throughout the country.

“In imposing the Aadhaar, the government of the day wanted to keep track of every single paise earned by the citizen and on other hand, political parties can receive funds anonymously through electoral bonds,” Santosh said in his submission.

He said that since his father is dead now, the biometric details would be of no use for the UIDAI and moreover, there were chances of their misuse and abuse.

The bench took on record his submissions and posted the matter for further hearing on March 20.

The bench is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar and its enabling Act.