SC notice to Centre on plea seeking population control - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

SC notice to Centre on plea seeking population control.

HC had rejected petition calling for steps like 2-child norm

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the Centre’s reply to a petition challenging a Delhi High Court order that dismissed a plea for measures, including a two-child norm, to control India’s rising population.

A Bench of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and Justices B.R. Gavai and Surya Kant issued notice to the Centre and others. The appeal, filed by BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, has challenged the September 3 order, which said it was for Parliament and the State Legislature to enact laws and not the court.
It said the High Court had failed to appreciate that the right to clean air, drinking water, health, peaceful sleep, shelter, livelihood and education guaranteed under Articles 21 and 21A of the Constitution could not be secured for all citizens without controlling the population.
Plea to enact law
“The High Court had failed to appreciate that after a detailed discussion, debate and feedback, Entry 20-A was inserted in List III of the 7th Schedule through the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976, which permits the Centre and the States to enact a law on population control and family planning,” said the petition, filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey.
It said the High Court did not take note of the fact that after a comprehensive discussion, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution, headed by former Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah, recommended on March 31, 2002, that Article 47A be inserted into the Constitution to control population explosion.


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SC notice to Centre on plea seeking population control

Supreme Court seeks government reply to plea on Aadhaar data use by private firms - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Supreme Court seeks government reply to plea on Aadhaar data use by private firms.

Petition says 2019 amendments to Aadhaar Act are violative of the earlier apex court judgments.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde and B.R. Gavai of the Supreme Court on Friday asked the Union government and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to respond to a petition alleging that recent amendments to the Aadhaar law opened the back door to private players to access citizens’ sensitive personal data.

The petition was filed jointly by former Army officer S.G. Vombatkere and activist Bezwada Wilson against the legality of Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Act, 2019 and the Aadhaar (Pricing of Aadhaar Authentication Services) Regulations, 2019.
The court has tagged the case with an earlier petition filed by the same petitioners raising identical grounds against the Aadhaar and Other Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019 and Aadhaar (Pricing of Aadhaar Authentication Services) Regulations, 2019.
‘Violation of fundamental rights’
The petition, filed by advocate Vipin Nair and represented by senior advocate Shyam Divan, said the law and regulations violated the fundamental rights as guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution.
“The impugned Act creates a backdoor to permit private parties to access the Aadhaar eco-system, thus enabling State and private surveillance of citizens, and the impugned Regulations permit the commercial exploitation of personal and sensitive information, which has been collected and stored for State purposes only,” it said.
The Act and Regulations were manifestly unconstitutional. They sought to relegislate certain provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. These provisions had originally enabled the commercial exploitation of personal information collected for the purposes of the State but were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Justice Puttuswamy case, it said.
In the Puttuswamy judgment, the court found that the architecture and design of the Aadhaar project did not enable mass surveillance of persons enrolled under the Aadhaar Act. It struck down certain provisions giving an avenue for private players to access Aadhaar data, including Section 57 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, which permitted private parties to use Aadhaar for authentication.
Database ‘lacks integrity’
The petitioner argued that the Aadhaar database lacked integrity. None of the data uploaded at the time of enrolment was verified by anyone.
“Permitting such a database to be linked with the existing databases of services offered under Chapter IV of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, and Section 4 of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, poses a grave threat to national security by permitting unverified data to creep into these databases,” the petition said. It called the Aadhaar database a Trojan Horse.
The new amended Act created a new system of “offline verification” that purportedly bypassed the authorities and led to unprecedented opportunities for unauthorised parties to save and replicate Aadhaar related personal data, in various offline federated databases, it said.
The 2019 Act had amended Section 7 of the original Aadhaar Act and increased the ambit of Aadhaar to cover the Consolidated Fund of the States also. “This is an impermissible expansion as it violates the federal structure of India... This increases the risk of surveillance and poses an impermissible threat to privacy,” the plea said.
Through the new regulations, the UIDAI expressly sought to commercialise and gain financially through large-scale collection of the citizens’ private data and the use of Aadhaar database by private entities.
Besides, it said, Section 2(3) of the Aadhaar (Pricing of Authentication Services) Regulations 2019 demonstrated coercion by the State through arbitrarily imposing enrolment targets and for empowering itself to levy penalty charges for not achieving those targets. This was a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution.


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Supreme Court seeks government reply to plea on Aadhaar data use by private firms.

SC to hear plea on govt delays over appointment of judges in higher judiciary after 8 weeks - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

SC to hear plea on govt delays over appointment of judges in higher judiciary after 8 weeks.

The Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear after eight weeks a plea which has alleged that the Centre has been “indefinitely sitting” on the names recommended by the apex court collegium for appointment of judges in the higher judiciary.

The plea, stating that the government cannot “frustrate” the process of appointment of judges in the apex court and high courts in “an oblique way” by sitting on collegium’s recommendations and not responding to names reiterated by it, came up for hearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.
Senior lawyer Dushyant Dave and advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), told the bench that the Centre has been sitting on several names for appointment as judges in the higher judiciary.
The bench, also comprising Justices K.M. Joseph and Hemant Gupta, asked Mr. Dave whether he knew the number of names which the collegium has reiterated to the Centre.
Mr. Dave said, “As far as I know, there are 13 names”.
To this, the CJI told Mr. Dave, “It is three times more. Papers are lying on my table.”
Mr. Dave requested the court to issue notice to the Centre on the plea but the bench said it would hear the matter after eight weeks.
During the hearing, the CJI told Mr. Dave that the apex court collegium has sent names to the government for appointment of judges in the Karnataka High Court.
The petitioner has claimed that “stone-walling” of judicial appointments by the executive for “oblique and vested interests” amounts to interference in the due process of law and the independence and integrity of the judiciary.
The plea has sought a direction to the Centre to notify the appointment of judges for the apex court and different high courts whose names have already been unanimously reiterated by the collegium and are pending with the government.
It has also sought a direction to the government to notify the recommendations for appointments of judges to various high court that have been sent by the collegium and the Centre has not responded even though six weeks have passed since the recommendations were received.
“An independent and transparent system of judicial appointments that is free from political and partisan considerations has an important bearing on the independence and impartiality of the judges,” the plea has said.
The petitioner has also alleged that important constitutional positions cannot be left vacant merely because of “inaction” of the government and its “politically motivated interference in the judicial appointment process”.
It has claimed that such an act not only show “complete disregard” of the law declared by the top court but “also a virtual breakdown of the consultative process thereby diminishing if not destroying the primacy of the Chief Justice of India with regard to appointment in the manner laid down in the judgement”.
Referring to the July 1 this year official figure available on the website of the Ministry of Law and Justice, the plea has said that strength of judges across high courts is 668 against the sanctioned strength of 1,079 judges. (Source: The Hindu)


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SC to hear plea on govt delays over appointment of judges in higher judiciary after 8 weeks.

Plea in Supreme Court against changes to amended SC/ST law - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Plea in Supreme Court against changes to amended SC/ST law.

A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday challenging the fresh amendments made to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act as violative of the fundamental rights to equality, life and liberty.

The amendments had restored the legislative intent of the original Act of 1989, which barred anticipatory bail to a person accused of insulting or hurting a Dalit.
The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill of 2018 overrides a March 20 judgment of the Supreme Court pronounced by a Bench of Justices (now retired) A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit restricting the powers of the police under the Criminal Procedure Code to arrest a suspect. The verdict had also read down a specific bar in the original Atrocities Act of 1989 against anticipatory bail.
The judgment reasoned that many false cases are foisted on innocent persons under the 1989 Act. The fundamental right of an innocent to be protected from arbitrary arrest should be protected. For this, the court had ordered that a Deputy Superintendent of Police should conduct a “preliminary enquiry” into every complaint of atrocity committed against an SC/ST community member.
Subsequently, the arrest of the accused persons should be approved by the Senior Superintendent of Police concerned. The judgment had led to widespread violence and loss of lives across the country, following which the government moved the Supreme Court for a review.
The 2018 Bill, passed by the Lok Sabha even as the review petition of the government is pending in the Supreme Court, overcomes the March 20 judgment by amending the 1989 Act to introduce Section 18A.
This provision does away with the need for a preliminary enquiry or requirement for an investigating officer to take prior approval from his superior before registering an FIR on a complaint under the Act. (Source: The Hindu)


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Plea in Supreme Court against changes to amended SC/ST law.

Supreme Court seeks attorney general’s help to examine plea on allocation of cases - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

Supreme Court seeks attorney general’s help to examine plea on allocation of cases.

This is the first instance of the Supreme Court showing a willingness to hear a challenge to the chief justice’s absolute power in allocation of cases to various benches.

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the assistance of attorney general K.K. Venugopal on a petition challenging the administrative powers of the chief justice of India regarding allocation of cases.
This is the first instance of the apex court showing a willingness to hear a challenge to the chief justice’s absolute power in allocation of cases to various benches.
On 11 April, a bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra dismissed a plea challenging his prerogative to allot cases and decide composition of benches of the apex court.
The petition on Friday was heard by a bench comprising justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan. Justice J. Chelameswar, who has publicly criticized the administrative powers of the chief justice, had refused to hear the matter on Thursday.
The plea filed by Shanti Bhushan, a senior advocate and former law minister, and his son, Prashant Bhushan, called for the authority to allocate important and sensitive cases to be extended to the Supreme Court’s four senior-most judges, apart from the chief justice.
This is not a workable option, said justice Sikri, “It will not be feasible to interpret that the ‘chief justice of India’ could mean the entire collegium (five senior judges). How can five senior judges of the Supreme Court sit everyday or twice a week to allot cases,” he said.
The chief justice is at the “helm of the institution” and is conferred with authority under the Constitution to take decisions on allotment of cases, justice D.Y. Chandrachud said on Wednesday. “There should not be a presumption of mistrust in the discharge of duties by the chief justice,” he added.
Reiterating that the chief justice was the “master of the roster” and sole authority to decide on allotment of cases, the court went on to say, “As a repository of constitutional trust, the chief justice is an institution in himself. The authority is entrusted to the chief justice because such an entrustment of functions is necessary for the efficient transaction of the administrative and judicial work of the court.” (Source: Livemint)


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Supreme Court seeks attorney general’s help to examine plea on allocation of cases.