On Day 38 of the Aadhaar hearings, senior counsels Gopal Subramanium, Arvind Datar, P Chidambaram, KV Viswanathan, and PV Surendranath concluded the rejoinder for the petitioners. The Supreme Court reserved its judgment. The Attorney General mentioned that this has been the second longest hearing in Indian history, with the longest being for the Kesavananda Bharati case.

Section 7 makes dignity conditional

First, senior counsel Subramanium continued his rejoinder for the petitioners. He commenced with arguing that if the purpose of Section 7 was to further the dignity of an individual, as argued by the State, this could not be done by making it conditional since dignity is an inalienable and inherent right. The Bench here, pointed to the issue of deduplication and reaching the correct beneficiary.

No evidence that Aadhaar achieved seamless delivery

The counsel next questioned if Aadhaar really was an instance of affirmative action (an action to favour those suffering from discrimination). He argued that it may be possible that there is mala fide intention behind the Aadhaar Act, but there was no evidence that the stated purpose of achieving seamless delivery through the Act, was actually being achieved. In fact, the only evidence available is that of exclusion. Aadhaar, he argued, only reinforced the asymmetry of power in favour of the State, enabling it to limit citizen rights.

Consider the true purpose of the law

A claim to a proper purpose, he argued, is not a proper purpose. The Aadhaar Act, he argued, is not an instrumentality to deliver services, but was a means of identification. He argued that the true purpose of the law must be taken into consideration. Authentication, he argued, is at the heart of the Aadhaar Act, and failure of authentication is a ground for denial of services.

Lack of oversight

On turning to the issue of lack of oversight of requesting entities, the Bench observed that an Act like Aadhaar needs a hierarchy of regulators, who are absent. The counsel further pointed out that the people’s data was being taken by the state without having a strong data protection framework backing it.

‘Subsidies, benefits and servers’

Further, under Section 7, the terms ‘grant of subsidies, benefits and services’ are expressions of condescension, instead of being treated as an entitlement. He questioned if affirmative action to rights under Article 14, 15, 16, 17, and 21 could all be made conditional. The burden to authenticate and establish identity had been imposed on the people. The Bench, here, observed that whether a subsidy is a benefit or a right is an issue to be decided.

The Bench observed here that Section 7 is only an enabling provision, questioning how the central government was guided before exercising its discretion to issue notifications under this Section. The counsel here, argued further that Section 7 had virtually been interpreted to be mandatory as opposed to discretionary, making citizens subservient to it.

Aadhaar Act should be completely struck down

The Aadhaar Act, he argued, needs to be struck down completely as it fails the tests laid down in the Puttaswamy case, there was no legitimate aim since the real aim differs from the purported one, there was no law when Aadhaar was implemented, and there is no proportionality.

With an aim to expand in the overseas market, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba purchased leading Pakistani online retailer Daraz on Wednesday. Following the transaction, the deal would help Alibaba in its plan to capture the growing South Asian consumer market.

MOUNT BENTAL, Golan Heights — The Israeli military said it struck dozens of Iran-linked military targets in Syria on Thursday in response to rocket fire, marking a significant escalation in regional hostilities a little more than a day after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. 

Israel said the attacks followed a volley of rockets directed at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, which caused no casualties. 

The Israeli military blamed the attack on Iran’s Quds Force, a special forces unit affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, and said this marked the first time that Iranian forces have fired directly on Israeli troops. 

India, every year, on May 11 celebrates 'National Technology Day' to mark the anniversary of Shakti. Shakti is a Pokhran nuclear test, which was conducted on May 11, 1998.

Various events such as competitions, quizzes, lecture, interactive sessions, and presentations are organized on the day in different technical institutes and engineering colleges of the nation to mar

• PM Narendra Modi's third visit to Nepal within a period of three years shows his commitment to the neighbourhood first policy

• He will call on Nepal President, vice-president and hold bilateral talks with his Nepalese counterpart

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], May 8 (NewsVoir): Women Economic Forum is the largest global gathering of women entrepreneurs and leaders worldwide. This annual event recognises the most successful women across all fields, with guests like Nobel laureate Ouided Bouchamaoui.

Nisha Bhalla, a 46-year-old holistic coach and consultant from Mumbai was felicitated at the recently concluded Annual WEF 2018 Awards, where she also spoke about 'Economics of Goodness in Giving and Philanthropy'. The event was held at Vivanta by Taj, Dwarka in Delhi from April 26 to May 1. Nisha was presented the 'Excellent Woman of Excellence' award for her spiritual service at the event on April 28.

On 9 May 2018, at 2:28am, China launched Gaofen-5 (GF-5), a remote sensing satellite meant to conduct scientific research on the earth’s atmosphere. The launch took place using the Long March 4C, a three-stage rocket that can put 4,200kg into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in Shanxi province.

GF-5 was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), and has a liftoff mass of 2700kg and a design life of 8 years. The satellite, which is China’s first high-resolution satellite for atmospheric observation, is also the first hyperspectral imaging satellite developed by China.

BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- The 2018 World Robot Conference will be held in Beijing from Aug. 15 to 19, authorities said Tuesday.

The event will see more than 12,000 competing teams from more than 10 countries and regions take part. More than 50,000 participants are expected to attend.

A robot competition will be held during the conference. Participants will compete in five categories in the competition.