(MENAFN - Asia Times) The mandatory linking of the Aadhaar with bank accounts and mutual funds has been postponed indefinitely. A by the department of revenue under the union Ministry of Finance on December 12 now states that a fresh date will be notified later.

The notification by the federal government came just a day ahead of a hearing in the Supreme Court, challenging the mandatory linking of the digital identity to bank accounts and other financial products. On June 1, this year, the government of India had issued a notification modifying the Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMLA) mandating that all citizens link their unique digital identity number, also known as 'Aadhaar', to their bank accounts. A similar order has been issued by the Department of Telecommunications asking citizens to link their Aadhaar number to their cell phone numbers.

The Aadhaar project has become one of the most controversial issues in India, raising massive concerns about the government's ability to carry out surveillance of citizens. While it was started as a 'welfare' project to ensure better targeted deliveries of government subsidies, it was , predicated on the ability to track citizens and profile them.

Avoiding Judicial Scrutiny?

'One thing is clear. The hearing was slated to start from tomorrow and the government doesn't want the court to look into this. That explains this last minute notification postponing the bank linking indefinitely,' Dr Usha Ramanathan, a legal researcher and one of the country's biggest privacy advocates told Asia Times. Ramanathan has been spearheading the move to scrap the Aadhaar project for over seven years and was instrumental in pointing the in the project.

Pune-based Dr Anupam Saraph, a noted expert and designer of complex system has been another campaigner who has repeatedly raised concerns about the project for year. 'The June 1 notification asking citizens to link their bank accounts was clearly illegal since the PMLA has not legal basis to freeze accounts of citizens. The government was aware of this and wanted to scare people into linking their accounts before the case came up for hearing,' he contended while speaking to Asia Times.

Reliable government sources told Asia Times that there was considerable worry over a "backlash from the public" if their bank accounts were frozen after December 31. Officials were worried that if the deadline was not postponed, many citizens would be denied access to their savings, and lead to a financial chaos.

The Indian Government issued a notification on December 12, 2017 postponing the mandatory linking of bank accounts to the Aadhaar number Worried at the growing implications of the project, the Supreme Court was urged to also examine whether privacy is a fundamental right, earlier this year. A rare, nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously as enshrined in various clauses of the Supreme Court. 'It has been four months since the landmark privacy judgment came out. The government has not done anything and was possibly waiting for the last minute, so that more people signed up, before issuing this notification,' Ramanathan said.

Ironically, the had issued a press release last week stating that the . The press release was issued in response to a viral video by a lawyer, Aishwarya Bhati, who had pointed out that the linking was not mandatory since the interim orders of the Supreme Court had specifically mandated it to be used for a few welfare schemes. While UIDAI argued that the law had overtaken the judgment, skeptics like Saraph are not convinced. 'If the circumstances have changed, then the UIDAI should have gone to court and sought a clarification. Why did they push it through by threatening citizens?'

A Surveillance Regime

Started by the Congress-led UPA government nearly eight years ago, it had seen massive opposition from the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). During that phase, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi even publicly tweeted that he had met up with the Aadhaar team and expressed his concerns about the security of the sensitive personal data, but the team could not come up with convincing answers.

However, some time between then and his election as the Prime Minister in May 2014, he seems to have had a change of heart about the project. It was revealed that Modi, as the Chief Minister had not only implemented the project join his state, but by the project.

As the BJP-led NDA government took over in May 2014, many had hoped for a roll back of the project. However, the government went ahead and began to push the project by virtually threatening citizens with disruption of basic services, such as their ability to file their income taxes.

Earlier, a bunch of petitions in the Supreme Court had challenged the project, as the petitioners pointed out the massive possibilities for misuse. As a German diplomat posted in India recently told this correspondent, 'such a scheme is prohibited by law in Germany. We have seen how such a database of citizens' data can be misused and German law explicitly prohibits it.'

The Supreme Court passed two interim orders, prohibiting the government from expanding the reach of the project and specified a few welfare schemes where this could be deployed. But the Modi government brought in a , which did not allow the Opposition to stall it under Indian laws. It has also failed to deliver welfare schemes in a targeted manner and has instead, from marginalized communities from getting their mandatory benefits.

This ensured that concerns expressed by law makers were not taken into consideration and the government managed to push through the law, bringing in surveillance clauses on the grounds of 'national security'. This gives the government unfettered access to sensitive personal data for profiling citizens in a granular manner. Due to the lack of any privacy law, this opens up citizens to manipulations by the government, that undermines democratic principles enshrined by the Constitution of India.

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