Appearing on behalf of the Delhi government, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi defended the doorstep delivery scheme, contending that the same would ‘prevent leakages in the system.’ He argued,
“I know that there is no place in India where you can say that there is zero corruption, but we will have measures for biometric, iris scanning. Our affidavit also says that the leakages are something we want to prevent. The proportionality and the reasonableness of this must be looked at.”
To this the Court inquired,
“Why can’t the proposed safeguards like geo-positioning and biometric verification be introduced in the existing scheme?”
On this, Advocate Asmita Singh on behalf of the Delhi government informed the Court that the safeguard of verification was introduced at fair price shops, however it was misused and thereafter legal action had been initiated.
“Let the law take its course. Whoever is found indulging in an irregularity can be proceeded against. Same thing can happen with the new tender or bidder also. They are also human beings of Indian origin sharing the same gene pool. What is the guarantee that this new set of individuals won’t be corrupt? In fact, in the current system, the FPS are spread across the whole city. In your system, we will have a few contractors running the whole system. They will be more educated than the FPS owners so there will be even more scope to manipulate,” the Bench said.
Source: Barandbench
