The Delhi High Court has granted UIDAI 4 weeks' time to file a response to a plea seeking damages for the losses due to an Aadhaar data leak, reports PTI. A two judge bench of Justice Ravindra Bhat and Prateek Jalan has listed the matter for hearing on February 14, 2019. The court was hearing a plea filed by SpicyIP founder and law scholar Shamnad Basheer where he alleged a violation of the fundamental right to privacy as affirmed in Justice KS Puttaswamy v Union of India due to Aadhaar data breaches (see more information below). The plea also urged the court to direct the Centre to either allow people to opt out of the system or delete the entire existing UIDAI data in view of alleged security breaches. While hearing the matter on August 21, the court gave six weeks time to UIDAI, Union of India (UOI), National Informatics Centre (NIC) and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to respond to it. Basheer filed the petition on May 19, before the Delhi HC. But at that time, the bench comprising of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Chandrashekhar had opined that it would wait for the outcome of the petition on Aadhaar pending before the Supreme Court. Basheer's petition and the plea before the HC Basheer's petition traces the journey of Aadhaar as a voluntary scheme which was gradually made near compulsory. The petition does not intend to challenge the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act. The petition further reads that UIDAI and the…
