Believe Supreme Court's judgment on Aadhaar was a very sound one, says Arun Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while speaking at the HT Summit that is underway shared his views on the recent Supreme Court’s (SC) judgements on Section 377, Aadhaar, adultery as well as his outlook on current account deficit (CAD), fund flows, National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and foreign direct investments (FDIs) etc.

“All the issues are separate issues and therefore you cannot have a generalised comment on all of the issues. There are some judgements which in terms of the political and economic life of the country would be very important. Aadhaar for instance. But leaving all those apart, if you take each one of them separately, there will be larger issues which arise out of them. You mentioned the 377 judgement, with regard to decriminalisation, all social reforms in a society come when there is a sustained campaigns for those reforms, those changes and thereafter either a legislative change comes or a judicial pronouncement comes and it effects them and societies get into a mood to accept that change and in India we have had at least with regard to many religions and social practices which have reformed over the last 60-70 years, and reformed perhaps for the better, I think the debate on 377 was on for a long time, it was a global debate and on the issue of decriminalisation, there was an international trend which was on. I was one of the first persons in political life years ago, who had commented that time had now come to decriminalise it,” he said.

“I went through the adultery judgement and the section itself was very badly worded, it needed to be struck down but then the rest of the observations can have many social consequences,” he added.

“I think the Aadhaar judgement – I am referring to the majority view – is a very sound judgement because after all, you have a system where you give a lot of government money in forms of various supports and subsidies to all kinds of people and that is what the principal object of Aadhaar. Aadhaar is not a citizenship card, it was that those who want benefits from the state – that is how it became a money bill, there was a great debate because I have moved the Aadhaar bill and I was responsible for converting it into a money bill, I was criticized for it that it is not a money bill and I said it is pure and simple distribution of a monetary resource by the state in terms of subsidies etc which must directly reach the bank accounts – therefore this was an identification and in the initial years itself, last year we had a saving of Rs 90,000 crore,” said Jaitley.