Unsign aadhaar MoU, set example for other states: Plea to West Bengal chief minister

By Our Representative
In a representation to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, a senior civil rights defender has said that the state home department's MoU with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) dated July 1, 2010 is "outdated" and it "imperils the autonomy of the state and the citizens", asking her to "unsign" the MoU.
Dr Gopal Krisha of the Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties asserted in his representation, "Your considered intervention will pave the way for other states to act on this MoU, which is facilitating unlimited and indiscriminate mass surveillance and mass spying at the behest of World Bank's eTransform Initiative and it's partners since 2010."
The West Bengal MoU was signed by AG Ghosh, OSD and ex-officio special secretary on behalf of the home department, West Bengal government, with Shri Nirmal Kumar Sinha, deputy director-general, UIDAI, Planning Commission.
Welcoming Banerjee's letter to the Prime Minister which said that "Aadhaar is becoming inactive", Krishna said, "I wish to inform you that in the aftermath of Aadhaar Act, 2016 (as amended in 2019), Hon'ble Supreme Court's verdict of September 26,2018, and November 13, 2019, there is a logical and legal compulsion for states to unsign their MoUs with UIDAI."
He added, these MoUs were signed in the pre-Aadhaar Act era and continue to operate in the era when "unconstitutional Sections like Section 57 of Aadhaar Act was recognised and declared as unconstitutional and illegitimate by our Hon'ble Supreme Court's verdict of September 26, 2018 and by the deletion of Section 57 by the amendment of 2019 in Aadhaar Act."
Claiming that the verdict of November 13, 2019 "recognised that the entire Act is unconstitutional", Krishna said, "A 7-judge Constitution Bench has been constituted to declare it to be so in order to adhere to judicial discipline", underlining, "No sane person will wait for formal announcement of poison to desist from consuming poison."
Calling Aadhaar Act "a poisonous" and "a black law akin to the colonial law which was bitterly resisted by Mahatma Gandhi's first satyagraha", he added, "Our Hon'ble Chief Justice of India has declared this law to be a fraud on the Constitution of India in his order dated September 26, 2018. He has reiterated it on at least two more occasions."
"In this backdrop", Krishna noted, "Constitutional, legal, judicial and political imagination creates a logical compulsion to resist this law which creates an architecture of unlimited government based on 360 degree surveillance. It is eroding the constitutionally mandated autonomy of states beyond repair."

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