NEW DELHI—India’s Supreme Court ruled the country’s massive biometric identity database is constitutional and benefits the poor, but should be restricted.
A five-judge panel said in a majority decision Wednesday that the controversial program can continue for the disbursement of welfare benefits, but shouldn’t be made mandatory for using mobile phones, opening bank accounts or in school admissions, according to a lawyer involved in the case.
Launched by the government in 2010, Aadhaar (“foundation” in Hindi) is an ambitious program to provide every resident a unique 12-digit number tied to fingerprints and eye scans. More than 1.2 billion people—nearly the entire population—have been enrolled, according to the Unique Identity Authority of India, which runs Aadhaar. That makes it the world’s largest such program.
In 2012, a retired justice and a lawyer petitioned the Supreme Court to block the project as a violation of the right to privacy. Dozens of other petitions followed; the court heard all the cases together.
The government argues that the ID system will allow the country to leap into the digital age by providing people with a reliable means of identification, which many currently lack. It has already curbed corruption in the distribution of state fuel and food rations, the government says.
Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of India IT-services titan Infosys who dreamed up the program, puts the savings to the government at $13 billion so far.
Aadhaar has been praised by the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for its pioneering use of technology, and analysts say it has huge promise to bolster India’s burgeoning digital economy by making it easier to set up bank accounts and get mobile connectivity for smartphones.
But critics call it government overreach that could lead to the surveillance of citizens, and provides a tantalizing target for hackers. Local media has reported instances of unauthorized access to the database, but the government says all biometric data remains safe.
Another concern, some academics and activists say, is that some of the country’s poorest citizens—such as the housebound and sick—have been cut off from the public distribution of rations like rice because they haven’t been able to enroll in the program.
“Urban, richer people are able to survive,” said Reetika Khera, an economist at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi who has studied Aadhaar’s use in distributing welfare benefits in rural parts of the country. “The ax has fallen on poor people.”
Ms. Khera and her colleagues say they have cataloged dozens of cases in which people have died after having had their benefits cut off because they lacked Aadhaar numbers.
Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell @wsj.com and Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com
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