Government extends deadlines of Aadhaar linking with all Schemes & Services to March 31st

On 15^th December 2017, the five – judges constitutional bench of the Supreme Court have extended the deadlines for linking Aadhaar number with all services and schemes including bank accounts and mobile numbers to March 31^st, 2018.

Government have extended the deadline of Aadhaar and bank account linkage for three more months i.e. March 31^st 2018…Read More

And the mandatory linkage date for Aadhaar and e – KYC (Know Your Customer) for mobile services have also been extended by March 31^st 2018; where earlier the date for completing the task was February 6, 2018 and this has been set forth under order dated February 6 of the Supreme Court in Lok Niti Foundation…Read More

These extensions of deadlines for all schemes of the ministries or departments of the union government are applicable to all state governments as well.

On 14^th December 2017, a number of senior advocates such as Shyam Diwan, Gopal Subramanium, Arvind Datar, K.V Viswanathan and Meenakshi Arora had advanced submissions which challenges the validity of the 139 notifications which are issued by the Central Government under section 7 of the Aadhaar Act of 2016 which mandates the 12 digit Unique Identification Number (UID) as an essential document for bank accounts, mobile phones, registration for examination, disbursement of scholarships, availing retroviral treatment for HIV patients, issue of death certificate etc.

And it also says that these notifications in breach of the Supreme Court interim orders dated August 11th, 2015 and October 15th 2015 enclosing mandatory owned of Aadhaar card to 6 social security schemes such as PDS schemes, LPG Distribution scheme, MGNREGA scheme, National Security Assistance Programme, PM Jan Dhan Yojana, and the Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme.

This argument also came forth that

It also reads that the decision of the nine – judge bench which is dated August 24 of the Supreme Court in the Justice K.S Puttaswamy matter, the right to privacy under Article 21 could only be entrenched upon with the backing of a strict regulation. This means that this 12 digit unique identification number cannot make a mandatory document unless it is required by legislation.

Moreover, Senior Advocates KTS Tulsi and Anand Grover and Advocate Prashant Bhusan have drawn attention of the apex court to the drastic consequences of leakage of biometric data that the Aadhaar scheme requires citizens to part with.