Aadhaar law cannot be struck down just because it can be misused: Supreme Court

The Aadhaar law cannot be struck down just because it can be misused, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

A five-judge bench of the Supreme court is hearing a bunch of petitions against the Aadhaar Act.

"We find it problematic to strike down a law merely on the possibility of misuse," Justice Chandrachud said Tuesday.

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"So treat Aadhaar as an exception," replied Kapil Sibal, who is arguing for the petitioners against the Act.

Sibal said that they are not saying there is a possibility of misuse. The "misuse already exists everyday", Sibal said.

"RTI made the citizen more powerful. Will Aadhaar Act make the state ever more powerful?" Sibal asked.

Sibal said that "every technology can be hacked. If somebody says it cannot be hacked, they are lying."

"There is no technology that cannot be misused," he said. Even the "telephone is misused", he added

To whichJustice Sikri replied: "Then there should be no inventions at all."

The Aadhaar Act aims to give every single Indian citizen a unique identification number. The government says that will help streamline the delivery of services to them.

The government has since ordered the furnishing of Aadhaar numbers to avail government benefits, as also the linking of the numbers to bank accounts and telephone numbers.

A number of petitions have been filed against the programme. The Supreme Court had ordered the grouping of the petitions and is hearing them at one go.

The petitioners have argued that the linking of the numbers to bank accounts and telephone numbers is "illegal and unconstitutional".

There have been reports in recent months of people unable to get government rations -- because they did not have Aadhaar numbers or were unable to furnish them -- dying from starvation. There have also been reports of citizens' data collected under the Aadhaar programme being sold.