Shillong, June 27: The Meghalaya Peoples’ Committee on Aadhaar (MPCA) expresses its appreciation to the Deputy Commissioner West Khasi Hills District on his clarification that enrolment of Aadhaar is voluntary in nature and not made mandatory.
The people of the State for only 9 % Aadhaar enrolment that is 288,299 out of 3,135,150 persons as per population projection of 2015 that is up to 15 May, 2017; the MPCA mention that the honourable Supreme Court for consistently upholding that Aadhaar enrolment is voluntary and not mandatory, to the extent of asking on 21 April, 2017.
In this regard “Is making Aadhaar by force only way to tackle fraud ?” and ‘debated the legality of a centralized biometric-based database of India’s 1.2 billion citizens.’ Revenue Department, Goverment of India for having exempted residents of Meghalaya, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir and citizens above the age of 80 ‘from mandatory quoting of Aadhaar to obtain PAN cards and file tax returns.’
The MPCA, urges upon all other Deputy Commissioners of other Districts in Meghalaya and different Goverment departments, financial institutions and others not to push for Aadhaar enrolment by coercion and through various attempts to make brownie points before the powers that be.
As the Aadhaar Act, 2016 itself mentions about Aadhaar not being made mandatory, minors (18 years and below cannot be made to register for Aadhaar through educational institutions and parents’ discretion as statistics show that 362 (0.1 %) infants (0 – 5 years age band, and 67,097 (6.5 %) children between 5 and 18 years age band have Aadhaar enrolment. It is violative of Honourable Supreme Court’s interim Ruling.
It is fervently hoped that the Honourable Supreme Court will constitute the Constitution Bench for deciding on the Privacy issue without much further delay “while an alarming number of government schemes have made Aadhaar mandatory in the meantime.” (Amber Sinha & Aradhya Sethia, Aadhaar Case: Beyond Privacy, An Issue of Bodily Integrity said the MPCA in the press statement today.
