CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE
Jawaharlal Nehru University
SEMINAR SERIES
Usha Ramanathan
On
After the Judgment: The UID Project
Abstract
On 26 September 2018, a Constitution Bench gave its decision on the constitutionality of the UID project, and the Aadhaar Act 2016. The case was taken to court with concerns about exclusion, biometrics, privacy, and surveillance. It tells us the story of the companies involved and their link with foreign security and intelligence agencies. The case narrates coercion, contempt of court, ubiquity and the seeding of multiple data bases. It raises questions of data breaches and insecurity of our data. And how personal data is treated as a business resource. Surely the Constitution is about the limits of state power, and the project steps outside this constitutional principle. The majority decision upheld the project, and the Act. The dissenting judgment reached a completely contrary conclusion. What explains this difference? The talk will search for answers to this question.
3.00 PM, Thursday, 25 October 2018
Conference Room, CSLG, JNU
About the Speaker: Usha Ramanathan works on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights. She researches, writes and speaks on issues that include the nature of law, Bhopal Gas Disaster, mass displacement, eminent domain, manual scavenging, civil liberties including the death penalty, beggary, criminal law, custodial institutions, the environment, judicial process. She has been tracking, and engaging with, the UID project and has written, and debated extensively, on the subject. She was a member of the Expert Group on Privacy set up in the Planning Commission of India which gave in its report in October 2012. She has served a member on committees to review the Draft Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012, to study the socio-economic status of tribal communities, and to revise the vagrancy law.
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