The Supreme Court must consider granting compensation to the families of people who have died of starvation because of glitches in the Aadhaar-based public distribution system, petitioners told the five-judge Constitution Bench on Thursday.

Aadhaar has been made mandatory for gaining access to the government’s various schemes in violation of the court’s direction to limit the identification system’s use for welfare schemes, former Karnataka High Court Justice KS Puttaswamy said.

Puttaswamy’s counsel Gopal Subramanium told the court that people had starved to death in Jharkhand and some other states as they did not receive ration because of flaws in the Aadhaar-based public distribution system, PTI reported.

Subramanium argued that Regulation 28 of the Aadhaar (Enrolment and Update) Regulations of 2016, which gives the Unique Identification Authority of India the right to deactivate as it deems appropriate, was not reasonable, Live Law reported.

The court will resume hearing the case on March 6, when senior counsel Arvind Datar will present his arguments on behalf of the petitioners.