The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that provisions of Article 110 of the Constitution were adhered to while categorising Aadhaar as a Money Bill, which had enabled the NDA government to avoid the legislation being scuttled in Rajya Sabha where it lacked a majority.
With Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other. Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill being termed as a Money Bill by Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, its passage in the lower House cleared the way for its coming into force as amendments proposed by Rajya Sabha became advisory in nature. Appearing for Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who had questioned categorisation of Aadhaar as a Money Bill, former finance minister P Chidamabaram had argued that this was a trick played by the NDA government to rob Rajya Sabha and the President from having a say on the Bill and make amendments to strengthen it.
However, a bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan drew the AG’s attention to the definition of ‘Money Bill” in Article 110(1) which said the Bill must contain “only provisions dealing with all or any of the following matters”. The bench said the Aadhaar Act, apart from containing the reference to the source of funds from the CFI, had a host of provisions on ancillary issues.
The AG said a law cannot be complete without providing for ancillary issues to achieve the objective behind spending huge sums from the consolidated fund. Appearing for UIDAI and Centre, advocate Zoheb Hossain said linking Aadhaar with PAN has helped authorities detect Rs 33,000 crore, which would have otherwise gone down as an undisclosed amount.
“Apart from this additional benefit, the Aadhaar linkage with PAN has helped the authorities to track down shell companies with dummy directors, who were playing havoc with banking system,” he said. He said, “No person shall be tracked or profiled through use of Aadhaar. Sharing or disclosing Aadhaar data is a punishable offence and that requesting agencies cannot store transaction that followed authentication through Aadhaar.” Arguments by AG would continue on Thursday.
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