Thread by @gautambhatia88

Aadhaar Day 6 Session 2.

AG says that in the new budget there is a 41% increase in the tax base most of which is due to Aadhaar.

Some informal discussion between Shyam Divan, Kapil Sibal and the bench on the fiscal structure. Chandrachud J says that increasing the tax base is important.

Back to Aadhaar.

SD says he has four more points to make.
He says that an element of limited government is that it is a shared enterprise between the people and the government.

SD says that another element of limited government is autonomy and the idea of space - the idea that I can do something without the State necessarily knowing.

SD says that a final element of limited government is the idea of giving citizens a choice in establishing an identity.

... in both interactions with the State and with private parties.

SD says that the State has advanced two justifications - giving people an identity, and savings.

SD says that both these claims are undermined by the State's own documents.

SD says that the Aadhaar enrolment system requires a pre-existing identity, and if you don't have it, then an Introducer is required.

SD: According to government statistics, the number of people who used the Introducer system is 0.03% (a little over 2 lakhs).

SD: This doesn't mean that I win my case, but it's important to have the facts on record.

SD: Consequently, the question is that can such small numbers justify such a vast an invasive system. We are not saying that identity is not important for the small number who didn't have it, but the point is whether it is justified to resort to Aadhaar.

Bhushan J says that numbers will not make a difference either way.
SD says that we are only pointing out that one of the State's core justifications for this project is not borne out by the facts.

SD says that the second justification is welfare and savings.

SD says that there are different type of malpractices. The first is that you fake your data and claim to be eligible when you're not. Second, quantity fraud. Third, identity fraud.

SD says that Aadhaar can at best only deal with the third type of fraud.

SD says that the World Bank has estimated a saving of 11 billion dollars per annum. Union has relied on this.

SD: Union of India has said that the World Bank is independent and will not indulge in puffery.

SD says that in another affidavit the Union of India has used the same figure of 11 billion dollars.

SD says that recently Paul Romer resigned from the World Bank citing no integrity in the data. This is one excellent example.

There is some dispute over what exactly the pleadings were with respect to the issue of puffery.

The Chief Justice says that Shyam Divan's argument is that you can't have policies even to advance Directive Principles if they end up excluding people.

SD reads out Kalyani Menon Sen's affidavit on the issue of exclusion. He says that the State's claims are based on the enrolment percentages, which amount to puffery, because enrolment has been not limited to citizens, and there has been no oversight.

SD talks about the World Bank claim. The claim footnoted a 2011 article which made no such claims. That article used the 11 billion figure to talk about transfers from five schemes, and talked only about the value of the transfers.

SD: Therefore the World Bank claim stands discredited. The figure was the total disbursement. There was no mention of savings.

After this was revealed, the World Bank replaces the citation with its own footnote.

SD says that maybe the World Bank didn't know, but the government official who signed the affidavit surely should have known that this figure is wrong.

SD says that the next point is that of MGNREGA. The Union has claimed DBT benefits and Aadhaar savings as 11741 crores.

SD says that UIDAI records show that the 74 lakhs NREGA job cards were seeded with Aadhaar, out of which out 67000 were found to be bogus.

SD: These were all in Tripura.
A Lok Sabha question was asked, where the figure given was 63000.

SD: Aadhaar therefore eliminated 63000. The maximum savings this would yield is 127 crores. This is less than 5% of the claimed saving of 3000 crores

SD: In an RTI questions were asked about the scale of savings and the method.

SD: No specific methodology was provided. It was just said that savings are in terms of efficiency and reducing delay. Nothing about fraud.

SD: In another year 93000 job cards were canceled, but many far reasons other than them being fake. In an RTI reply it was found that the number of cards canceled for being fake were 1%

CJI says that Shyam Divan's point is that the margin of exclusion is high and the margin of inclusion is low.

CJI says that Shyam Divan's argument is that the larger public interest cannot be invoked to justify the extinction of individualism.

SD agrees.

CJI says that there is a pending judgment on whether a court can look at parliamentary proceedings. That judgment will come out in ten or twelve or days.

SD comes to LPG subsidies. He talks about the concerns expressed by the CAG.

SD: The LPG linking began as a pilot in 2014. The figures given in UIDAI affidavit is 14000 crores of savings.
However, cabinet secretariat minutes show an annual subsidy saving of 91 crores. Compare 14000 with 91.

SD: What happened was that long before Aadhaar, the NIC came up with a scheme to weed out duplicates. The savings occurred long before Aadhaar.

SD: The CAG report is specifically with respect to the implementation of the LPG linking scheme, and the CAG has specifically said that you cannot attribute the savings to the Aadhaar linking, because the savings come from the NIC's earlier program to weed out duplicates.

SD: In fact, the CAG specifically said that part of the savings is because of people not linking Aadhaar. This actually points to exclusion.

SD: So what really is the scale of the savings then?

SD says that his last argument will be about the body.

SD reads out an affidavit by a fieldworker on the Jharkhand NREGA program.

The affidavit recounts starvation deaths that occurred in Jharkhand because of Aadhaar linking failures.

The affidavit recounts the testimonies of family members who said that individuals gradually starved to death because they were dependent on their grain entitlement, which in turn was linked to Aadhaar.

The affidavit recounts villagers" testimony about ration dealers tampering with the Aadhaar grain records to hide leakages.

The affidavit recounts testimony about pension not being credited because Aadhaar was linked to more than one account, and the pension was sent elsewhere. The bank manager said that it was a technical glitch.

Bench rises.

There was a confrontation between Chandrachud J and Mr Divan earlier when Chandrachud J says that it seemed that if they didn't hold with the Petitioners, they would be treated as ideologically committed.

Chandrachud J said that they were not Aadhaar judges and nor were they NGO activist lawyers.

When the bench rose, Mr Divan apologised if his tone had conveyed that impression.

To resume on Tuesday. Mr Divan will conclude and the case will be taken forward by other counsel for the petitioners.

Cheers.