A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Friday asked the Centre to respond to a writ petition challenging its directive to make 'Aarogya Setu' app mandatory for all employees, including those in the private sector.
The order was passed by a Bench comprising Justice Shaji P. Chali and Justice M.R. Anitha.
In his petition, District Congress Committee general secretary John Daniel said the app was a tracking mobile application which used the GPS and Bluetooth features in smart phones to track COVID-19 patients. It collected the personal information during registration and stored it in the cloud.
The directive was issued by the Centre as part of the national directives for COVID-19 management. The directives said that it should be the responsibility of the head of the respective organisations to ensure 100% use of the app among all employees.
The petitioner pointed out that the Centre's directive had violated the fundamental rights of the citizen. There was also a possibility of misuse of the personal information given in the app. It raised concerns of surveillance of citizens by the Centre as well. In fact, the directive took away the right of a person to decide and control the use of information about him/her. One was forced to give away data to a system.
The Centre’s guidelines had made it clear that prosecution would be launched against those employers who did not comply with the directive, under Section 58 of the Disaster Management Act 2005. In fact, an employer who had only a work relationship with an employee could not compel the employee to install a mobile application and use it diligently. Besides, the directive did not specify which department or ministry or official would be accessing the data.
The petitioner sought to strike down as unconstitutional the directive of the Centre.
