Aadhaar linking deadline of March 31 extended indefinitely till Supreme Court delivers verdict

Aadhaar linking deadline of March 31 extended indefinitely till Supreme Court delivers verdict

The Supreme Court order basically relates to the linking of Aadhaar with the phone numbers  and the bank accounts.

The Supreme Court has extended the deadline on Tuesday the March 31 to link the Aadhaar with different government services, the bank accounts, the Permanent Account Numbers for the filing of the tax returns and even to the mobile phone connections indefinitely until it finally delivers a conclusive verdict on all these petitions questioning the authentication of these unique identification number.

The five-judge bench led by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Tuesday said that the extension will not be applying to various government services and benefits like availing benefits of the pensions and various scholarships, the subsidised foodgrains under the purview of the Public Distribution System, the subsidised cooking gas and the very flagship job guarantee plan for the rural households.

Since such benefits are covered by the Section 7 of the  Aadhaar Act, which basically deals with the deliverance of the financial benefits and the subsidies and various services under Indian government welfare programmes.

Those availing such benefits will still be required to provide the Aadhaar card biometric ID details and the unique number assigned to them by UIDAI.

The court also restrained the government authorities from making Aadhaar a mandatory document for issuance of the tatkal passports, which are basically processed faster and emergencies.

Earlier in December last year, the Supreme court extended the deadline till March 31 from the December 31, 2017 deadline for linking various services with their unique Aadhaar number, which has now become the foundation of various government welfare programmes, tax administration network and the online financial transactions.

A final judgment on the matter is very unlikely before the end of the current month of March, 2018.

Attorney General KK Venugopal, who also appears for the UIDAI, left it to the Supreme court to extend this interim order. However, he also urged the bench not to change this arrangement under section 7 of the Aadhaar law.

Venugopal had also said the Centre was certainly not averse to extending the given deadline, but there is no immediate requirement for an extension of deadline and asked the bench to see on how the case in consideration progresses.