There is no presumption of guilt: ASG

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the Centre as to why it should insist on Aadhaar for all financial transactions as it stigmatises the entire population.

Drawing an analogy Mr. Mehta said, “We travel by air and all passengers are frisked. This does not mean that all of us are hijackers. It is to done to protect us from hijacking,” 

Justice Sikri intervened and pointed out that frisking is done only for those who “choose to travel. You cannot compare it with the Aadhaar situation where 128 crore people are mandatorily asked to link their SIMs, bank accounts and PAN cards with their Aadhaar cards.”

Mehta said, “When a measure is uniformly applied, it does not mean that everyone is guilty. An administrative measure does mean individualised suspicion. There is no presumption of guilt on everyone.” Justice Chandrachud said such intrusion may be justified in combating terrorism, but should the public be subjected to this just to prevent chances of tax evasion.

Mehta said the court was right in thinking why the government should “intrude into the privacy of the entire population just to weed out few crores, but when tax evasions amount to Rs 33,000 crore, it is a serious problem which Aadhaar linkage may curb.”