Paridhi Arya
Published on: April 11, 2022 at 14:31 IST
The Petition filed in the Supreme Court asking the Release of 830,000 People’s Biometric which were collected for updating the National Register for Citizens (NRC).
This Petition was filed last year by Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Sushmita Dev through Advocate Tulika Mukherjee but it got listed now.
Sushmita Dev said “The Supreme Court prefers most important issues while listing the Petitions. This is a serious Public issue and we are happy that the Court has finally agreed to hear it,”
In July 2018, the Final Draft of National Register for Citizens was released which left out four million people of Assam another Supplementary National Register for Citizens in August 2019 included 1.9 million people but still Government denied to issue Aadhaar Cards to 830,000 people whose Biometrics were also locked.
Argued by Dev in Petition, “While there exists a reasonable Basis of Classification for release of the Biometric details of those persons whose Claims and Objections have been rejected and their names don’t appear on the National Register for Citizens. However, people included in the National Register for Citizens by the Supplementary list cannot be considered as a different class from the person whose names had appeared in the First Draft List.”
Citizenship of a person is not proved by the Aadhar Card anyone who has resided for 182 days (preceding 6 months) in India can be enrolled for Aadhar so accordingly these people cannot be denied from having Aadhar Card.
All the facilities in India got Linked with Aadhar and now Government is planning to link Voter Identity Cards.
“Denying Aadhar Registration to a person whose names appeared on the list released on 31.08.2019 is manifestly Arbitrary. There exists no Law which Bars the Grant of Aadhar Number to persons whose names appeared in the Final National Register for Citizens list and therefore, such an Act is not sanctioned by Law” stated in the Petition.
Even the request has been made to Registrar General of India (RGI) by Ranjeet Kumar Dass who is Assam Minister to Amend Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) so that 830,000 people can get Aadhar.
The reply made to this by National Register for Citizens State coordinator Hitesh Dev Sharma that only Supreme Court is the one who can Amend Standard Operating Procedure, Registrar General of India need to notify these people to get Aadhar.