Making Aarogya Setu Mandatory is “Utterly Illegal”: Justice Srikrishna
May. 12, 2020The government’s directive mandating the installation ofAarogya Setuon every smartphone in the country is“utterly illegal”, according to former Supreme Court Judge, B. N. Srikrishna. In an interview toThe Indian Express, Justice Srikrishna expressed his surprise at how the government could pass an order that goes against all existing privacy laws in the country, saying:“Under what law do you mandate it on anyone? So far it is not backed by any law”.
According to him, the recent Home Ministry directivemaking the use of the app mandatoryfor all public- and private-sector employees in the country does not have sufficient legal backing.“These pieces of legislation — both the National Disaster Management Act and Epidemic Diseases Act — are for a specific reason. The national executive committee in my view is not a statutory body”, he said.
The judge also came down heavily on the recent Noida Police directive thatthreatened citizens with jail-timefor not installing the app on their device(s). According to him,“The Noida police order is totally unlawful. I am assuming this is still a democratic country and such orders can be challenged in court”.
Justice Srikrishna is one of the many prominent citizens speaking up against the mandatory installation of the Aarogya Setu app that has already been alleged to beleaking private user-dataof tens of millions of people around the country.
Stung by criticism from various quarters, the government on Mondayissued a new set of guidelinescalled the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing protocol for storing and processing data collected through the controversial app.
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