Most courts are unlikely to ever say that something done by the President of India on the advice of the Union Cabinet was an abuse of power. Part of this comes down to a desire not to be seen as encroaching on the separation of powers and the government’s discretion when it comes to policy, while part of this comes from a well-established tradition of not rocking the boat too much.

Even so, if there is any case where the higher judiciary had grounds to raise an eyebrow, Aadhaar is it.

Ever since its inception, Aadhaar and propriety have spectacularly failed to go hand in hand. From the absence of a law governing its use when it was introduced by the UPA government, to the way in which the Aadhaar Act 2016 was railroaded through Parliament by designating it a Money Bill, a disregard for the law has been a key feature of the programme.

The designation of the Aadhaar Act as a Money Bill was termed by Justice Chandrachud, in his dissenting opinion in the Aadhaar case, as a “fraud on the Constitution”. The majority judgment skirted around this, but still made sure that any non-Money Bill elements of the Act were struck down or read down.

Coming to the ordinance itself, it follows an attempt to get this law passed in Parliament – a bill with the same amendments was passed by the Lok Sabha on 8 January 2019, but wasn’t passed by the Rajya Sabha before the session ended. The fact that it failed to get past the Rajya Sabha should not be so easily discounted, since it was because of objections in the Rajya Sabha that the Money Bill fiasco had taken place in 2016.