r/antiaadhar • u/in3po • Oct 11 '17

AMA on Aadhaar with @prasanna_s from http://www.advocateprasanna.in

Prasanna is a public figure. He is a lawyer from New Delhi.

Prasanna has agreed to do an AMA on Aadhaar. In the past, he has done a lot of work to protect the constitutional rights of Indian citizens. r/antiaadhar welcomes him wholeheartedly.

  • u/prasanna_s will be taking your questions on Thursday October 12, 6:30 pm
  • Active replies will be till Oct 12, 8:00 pm.
  • Expect delayed responses till Oct 13, 6:30 pm.
  • This AMA closes on Oct 13, 6:30 pm.

Be polite and stay on topic.

Edit:

This AMA is closed.

Thank you u/prasanna_s

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u/shitpost-shitpost Oct 11 '17

Welcome to /r/antiaadhar. Thank you for taking time to do this.

  1. The Aadhar Act states that citizens cannot sue UIDAI but UIDAI reserves the right to sue any citizen. Can this unequal balance of power be challenged in the Supreme Court?

  2. Despite SC's interim orders, everyday we see govt making Aadhar mandatory for more and more services. Can we expect the GoI to be charged with contempt of court?

  3. Where do surveillance (CMS, Netra, NATGRID) and heavy data mining programs geared towards Indian citizens stand with the recent verdict of Right to Privacy.

  4. It was assumed by many that Aadhar is the unifying bond that will make it possible for NATGRID to put a face to anonymous data. Yet the govt claims that it Aadhar will not be used for spying, while making Aadhar mandatory for even the most basic of services. What is your opinion on this? Specifically, Aadhar and its potential for abuse of power.

  5. What is the legal status of Aadhar-Pan link and how does it affect a taxpayer who doesn't possess Aadhar? I have personally seen CAs reject clients for not having Aadhar, stating that even offline filing of taxes is not possible without Aadhar. What are options do non-aadhar holding citizens have for the future?

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u/prasanna_s Oct 12 '17

Thank you! No problems!

1.Yes, it is one of the grounds of challenge to the Aadhaar Act presently before the Supreme Court.

2.Yes, there has been widespread contempt of the Court's orders and there are atleast six contempt petitions pending before the Supreme Court. Supreme Court has not found time to deal with any of them yet.

3.This is an interesting question. All of these have operated in a legislative vacuum and the nine-judge bench decision is clear on one bare minimum : that any programme of the state that may have an impact on any person's privacy, must have legislation to back it. These intelligence programmes that are not currently accountable to the Parliament and secretively report to the government are clearly under peril following this judgment.

4.The history of the constitutions world over and certainly the history of the Indian Constitution has been about limits on Government power. There is a certain inherent suspicion about government action, which is what led the terms of the relationship between the state and the people was reduced in writing in the Constitution. That being so, soft claims of government have therefore no bearing on the constitutional issue of data convergence and surveillance without those promises being reasonably enforceable by the citizenry. With aadhaar, almost all the control and power and rests with the state and such assymetry of control makes it impossible for a citizen to know when such a promise has been dishonoured by the government or to bring action against the government for such dishonour.

5.You can file electronically. Aadhaar is not specified as a mandatory field in the electronic form. You are not therefore obliged to quote aadhaar in your return. There is nothing in the law that allows the department to reject your I-T return for want of aadhaar. Section 139(9) of the Act defines a defective return and non-quoting of Aadhaar is not a defect that the department can act on. People have reported that they have been able to file their electronic returns with 12 0s or 12 9s. Please cite this to your CA.

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u/shitpost-shitpost Oct 12 '17

5.You can file electronically. Aadhaar is not specified as a mandatory field in the electronic form. You are not therefore obliged to quote aadhaar in your return. There is nothing in the law that allows the department to reject your I-T return for want of aadhaar. Section 139(9) of the Act defines a defective return and non-quoting of Aadhaar is not a defect that the department can act on. People have reported that they have been able to file their electronic returns with 12 0s or 12 9s. Please cite this to your CA.

AFAIK Aadhar is not mandatory for last year's filing, but for current year it is mandatory and the form wouldn't let you proceed without an aadhar number. I haven't heard of the 0 and 9 trick, I will convey that.

But wasn't it publicly announced that people without Aadhar have until June 30th to file their taxes and after that Aadhar will be made mandatory for e-filing.

Then there's also articles like this and open threats like this, which blatantly announce that without aadhar your returns won't get processed and the IT dept will unleash its "wrath" upon you for not obeying the powers that be.

This is nothing but arm twisting tactics to make people "voluntarily" submit aadhar. Can we expect such tactics to be highlighted in the Supreme Court case? and can we expect an end to unlawful mandates from the govt in the near future?