Tanvi Sinha
The SC dismissed review petitions on the 2018 Supreme Court verdict of the Aadhar judgement where it declared Aadhar as constitutionally valid but struck down provisions of the scheme with regards to its links with bank accounts, mobile phones and school admissions.
The five-judge by Justice A M Khanwilkar hearing the petition had held the judgement as valid in 4:1 majority with Justice DY Chandrachud once again being the only dissenting opinion regarding the Aadhar matter.
The judgement had been all set for hearing on 11th January, based on review petitions that had started making the rounds in 2018 mere days after the original judgement.
Once again, as an echo to his dissenting opinion in 2018, Justice Chandrachud brought up the matter of his contention to the Aadhar Act having been passed as a money bill. He stated that the petition be kept pending till a larger bench decided on the matter of it being a money bill or not.
The reasoning behind why something that according to the petitioners, was not a money bill, was passed as a money had been that there was want from the side of the government to pass the bill with minimal Rajya Sabha intervention.
This is as according to Article 109 of the constitution where it declares that the role of the Rajya Sabha with the money bill is only so far as recommendations.
The majority order of January 11th stated that they saw no need of a review judgement on the order and that change to a law and the judgement of a larger bench cannot be regarded as a ground for review.
In 2018 in the Justice K. S. Puttaswamy v Union of India case, a five judge bench of CJI Deepak Misra, Justices Arjan Kumar Sikri, Ajay Manikrao Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan the act had been considered constitutional but had sections struck down.
However, Justice DY Chandrachud said he disagreed with the majority and that since the judgement of the 2018 bench was contended by a coordinate bench in Rojer Mathew and hence deserves to be heard once again by a larger bench.
A doubt by another constitution bench was not something small, and to say there were no grounds to review the judgement would, according to Justice Chandrachud be a grave error.