NEW DELHI: With terrorism posing a major threat and the government spending thousands of crores on social welfare measures, there’s a need to strike a balance between a citizen’s right to privacy and state interest, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday during a hearing on Aadhaar ’s constitutional validity.The court said the real issue regarding Aadhaar is how to prevent misuse and leak of data collected by the Unique Identification Authority of India . The court said data could not be allowed to track people’s activities that fall in the private domain but can be used to serve national interest.Opponents of the scheme, who have contended that Aadhaar linkage would result in a ‘ Nazi regime and police raj’ with the government tracking each movement of people, said the rights of citizens needed to be protected against pervasive surveillance and violation of “informational privacy”.A Constitution bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan said the real issue regarding Aadhaar is protecting data, underlining the importance of national interest in tackling terrorism and money laundering.“In the time of problems faced by the country due to terrorism and money laundering, and when the government is spending thousands of crores for the social welfare, a balance between state interest and citizens’ privacy right has to be maintained,” said Justice Chandrachud, hinting that an absolute right to privacy could not be claimed.The bench also said government authorities, like private companies, could not use Aadhaar data to keep surveillance and track the movements of citizens as the Centre was bound by the Constitution.Calling the Aadhaar Act as illegal and unconstitutional, senior advocate Shyam Divan , appearing for social activists, said the project created an architecture for surveillance and will lead to an Orwellian state where every move of citizens will be constantly tracked and recorded by the government agency. He said the right to privacy was protected even under British rule and the government must not be allowed to go ahead with the scheme. Arguing that the Aadhaar Act offers no added protection, he said, “During both the pre-Act and post-Act periods, the project continues to violate the right to privacy by requiring individuals to part with demographic as well as biometric information to private enrolling agencies. By enabling private entities to use the Aadhaar authentication platform, citizen’s right to informational privacy is violated. Even where a person is availing of a subsidy, mandatory authentication through Aadhaar violates the right to informational privacy.”The bench, however, asked why people should object to parting with information under Aadhaar when they did not have a problem in sharing details with private companies like Google which kept track of preferences and choices. Divan responded that it is the duty of the government to protect citizens and bring a law against private firms for violating fundamental rights.