Airtel — non-compliance with the orders of hon'ble supreme court

Sir/madam,

With reference to the flood of messages that you have sent to mobile subscribers saying, “”link your aadhaar card to you number now to stay active! As per the government of india, this is mandatory to enjoy continued services”.

With reference to the letter of department of telecommunications (Dot), union ministry of communications is inconsistent with law and hon’ble supreme court’s 5-judge constitution bench order of october 15, 2015. This department issued a letter dated 23 march, 2017 on the subject of “implementation of hon’ble supreme court orders regarding 100% e-kyc based re-verification of all existing subscribers” wherein it partially refers to the observation made in hon’ble court’s order of 2-judge bench dated february 6, 2017. The observation of the hon’ble court 2-judge bench to which the dot letter refers is at para 5 of the order. It reads: “in view of the factual position brought to our notice during the course of hearing, we are satisfied, that the prayers made in the writ petition have been substantially dealt with, and an effective process has been evolved to ensure identity verification, as well as, the addresses of all mobile phone subscribers for new subscribers.in the near future, and more particularly, within one year from today, a similar verification will be completed, in the case of existing subscribers.” after citing this part of the hon’ble court order, the letter will have us believe that “this amounts to a direction which is to be completed within a time frame of one year.” having reached this inference, dot has sought uid/aadhaar based verification of new mobile subscribers and re-verification of all existing mobile subscribers.
We wish to draw your attention to the fact that dot has reached a flawed inference with regard to whether or not february 6, 2017 observation of 2-judge bench “amounts to a direction” or not because under no situation can the union ministry of communications establish that 2-judge bench’s order will prevail over the 5-judge constitution bench’s order.
We submit that after the 9th june 2017 verdict of justice a k sikri headed bench of hon’ble supreme court on 12 digit biometric unique identification (Uid)/aadhaar, dot’s letter dated 23 march, 2017 has become invalid on three grounds. One, the letter is illegal as it is in violation of the hon’ble court’s 5- judge bench order. Two, the letter is inconsistent with aadhaar act, 2016. Three, the hon’ble court’s order of 9 june 2017 will prevail over the dot letter dated 23 march, 2017.
We submit that nowhere does the aadhaar (Targeted delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) act, 2016 provide for and authorise “seeding”’ o[censored]id/aadhaar numbers in databases. The act provides for only two uses:
1. Authentication, which means that biometric or demographic data can be sent to the uid’s cidr (Central identities data repository) to return a `yes/no’ reply to the question whether you are who you say you are.
2. Ekyc, which does something they had said they would never do, viz., give the data on their data base (Except core biometric data – but they have no means of stopping any agency from collecting and keeping biometrics when it is given for authentication) to an authorised service agency.
We submit that section 8 (2) (B) of the act is categorical that an agency requesting authentication “ensure (S) that the identity information of an individual is only used for submission” to the central identities data repository (Cidr) of 12-digit biometric unique identification (Uid)/aadhaar numbers “for authentication”. It does not authorise anyone to hold on to the number.
We submit that as per the order of hon’ble supreme court’s 5-judge bench dated 15 october 2015, aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for the purposes of linking to mobile phones. This has been reiterated by the hon’ble court on 9th june and 27th june, 2017.
We submit that the use of aadhaar for linking to other databases, retention, storage or publishing is not only prohibited and is a punishable offence under the the aadhaar (Targeted delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) act 2016.

Inspite of all this chembur airtel center refused to process without biometrics

Best wishes