Ready to extend deadline to link Aadhaar with services: Centre
NEW DELHI: The central government told the Supreme Court on Monday that it was willing to extend up to March 31 next year the deadline to link Aadhaar with various schemes and services, including bank accounts and phone numbers.
The current deadlines for linking of bank accounts and mobile phone numbers swith Aadhaar, a 12-digit biometric identification number, are December 31, 2017 and February 6, 2018 respectively. But the court didn’t provide relief to the petitioners, who have been seeking an interim stay order on the making Aadhaar mandatory for welfare schemes until all cases pertaining to linkages were resolved.
This means government agencies can continue to ask for Aadhaar numbers for schemes and services. Relief, if any, may come from a Constitution bench that will be constituted next week to hear all petitions challenging Aadhaar. A bench headed by the CJI, Dipak Misra, said only Constitution bench will pass any interim order.
According to the court, the Constitution bench will take up the Aadhaar case after the hearing in the Delhi-Centre dispute over administrative control of the national capital is over. “Let’s see next week. Let the application be listed next week,” the bench said.
Attorney general KK Venugopal told the court that the government can extend the deadline to March 31 next year. for all people, irrespective of whether they have Aadhaar or not (delete).
The government had earlier agreed to provide extension to only those who don’t have Aadhaar.
Then, on October 30, it had said the deadline will not be extended at all. Several petitions challenging the validity of the Aadhaar law are pending in the top court.
The hearings got delayed after a larger question on the right to privacy was referred to a ninejudge bench. This was done because the petitioners questioned Aadhaar on the grounds it infringed upon their privacy, which they contended was a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
On August 24, the nine-judge bench declared privacy was a fundamental right. On October 30, the CJI said a five-judge Constitution bench would hear all Aadhaar-related petitions. The government has argued Aaadhar is necessary to plug leakages in its subsidised welfare programmes, to prevent corruption, and to protect national security.