Orissa High Court was confronted with an interesting petition from a parent who refused to give consent to the school of his child which wanted to create an APAAR ID. The ID is considered a unique identification that is designed to provide a lifelong 12 digit digital identifier to store the academic accomplishments. It is meant to be used for certain purposes which are beneficial to the subject in making available the ID to other institutions for educational services. It is not expected to be used for marketing or other purposes prohibited under DPDPA 2023.
However the petitioner invoked the Justice Puttaswamy judgement and no discussion seems to have been made on DPDPA provisions. The school contended that there is a provision to withdraw the consent any time. The Petitioner contended that “Withdrawal of consent” was after providing the consent and is different from “Option not to give consent”.
The Court has agreed with this contention and suggested alteration of the consent form.
The issues that should have been debated here are whether the school can segregate the APAARID related services from others and provided a purpose specific privacy notice to enable the subject to understand the likely consequences of not registering for the APAAR ID. Some services should be exclusively linked to the holders of APAAR ID and then such objections would not arise.
By refusing the registration, many of the services of the department of education may become difficult to avail on a later date.
Naavi
