A Balanced Approach to Privacy for Aadhaar: Between Privacy & Convenience

Abstract

The article legally examines the key privacy concerns pertaining to the Aadhaar, a unique digital identity project of India. The Aadhaar project is stipulated as the core platform for the advent of a digital society and economy as steered by the IndiaStack template that aims to integrate identity data management across different sectors for an efficient and hassle-free transfer of ideas, goods and services across the nation. Although the project has high and defensible ambitions to bring the much-needed ease or convenience along with economic benefits in India, there are genuine data privacy concerns which makes it economically, politically and legally - a highly ambitious and controversial project. The amount of data which is captured in the process of Aadhaar enrolment and authentication given that the core database of Aadhaar remains centralized creates new vulnerabilities making it susceptible to state or private surveillance of citizens. Thus, it becomes necessary to diagnose the data privacy arguments in light of the constitutional right to privacy and analyze whether the Supreme Court’s Aadhaar judgment ‘balances’ citizen’s right to privacy with Aadhaar objectives and whether such ‘balancing’ meets the standard benchmark or lacks in the same.