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Secondly, I would like to address the issue of reintroduction of access to Aadhaar data on the premise of national security. This is very, very important. The Government has attempted to reintroduce access to such data, which was determined unlawful by the hon. Supreme Court in 2018, by simply replacing the word ‘Joint Secretary’ with ‘Secretary’ in Section 33 (2) of the Aadhaar Act. This action by the Government goes against the recommendation of the Justice B. N. Srikrishna Committee which in its Report titled ‘A Free and Fair Digital Economy Protecting Privacy, Empowering Indians’ has recommended that replacing sole executive action in the context of surveillance with judicial or independent oversight observing that sole executive review in the lawful breach of citizens’ private data is not at par with other comparative democratic frameworks in Germany, United Kingdom and South Africa.

This attempt of legalising breach of citizens’ data in the name of national security is a dangerously powerful mandate in which it allows the Government to infringe the Fundamental Right to Privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution in article 21 and article 19 (a), which is, I quote, “is an intrinsic part of life and personal liberty”.

In the end, I would like to say that this Government during the last five years and especially during the last five months has proved itself extremely irresponsible when it is not determining who it considers ‘anti-national’, who it considers ‘against the interest of the nation’ and who it considers ‘a threat to national security’, be it journalists, academic students or ordinary citizens who exercise their Right to Expression and Freedom of Speech.