CJI Bench Hearing Aadhaar Case Will Also Hear 377 & Adultery Cases

These matters will come up for hearing starting 17 January.

Biometric data of about 99 crore Indians have been collected so far under the Aadhar scheme.

(Photo Courtesy: iStock/Altered by The Quint)

The Supreme Court of India will, on 17 January, begin hearing a batch of petitions challenging the validity of Aadhaar and the mandatory linkage of the biometric identity to several services and social welfare schemes.

The Constitution bench will comprise Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, and Justices AM Khanwilkar, AK Sikri, Ashok Bhushan and DY Chandrachud, according to the Supreme Court’s website.

The final hearing in the matter comes five years after the first petition was filed. The Supreme Court has dealt with cases related to it, such as the Aadhaar-PAN linkage and the Right to Privacy judgement which arose in the context of challenges to the Aadhaar scheme.

A separate Constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India had extended the deadline to link Aadhaar with all services — from bank accounts to mobile services — to 31 March from its earlier 31 December deadline. Petitioners had sought an extension to the deadline until the court finally decides on the challenge to the validity of the 12-digit unique ID.

Other Important Hearings

Other constitution benches, the compositions of which are still unknown, will also deal with:

• A challenge to its 2013 judgment which criminalised gay sex between consenting adults under Section 377 of the IPC
• The ban on the entry of women between 10 and 50 years of age into Kerala’s Sabarimala temple
• Whether a Parsi woman loses her religious identity if she marries a man of another religion
• A challenge to the validity of the penal law on adultery which currently punished only married men for having extra-marital sexual relationships with another married woman

These matters will also come up for hearing starting 17 January.

(With inputs from BloombergQuint)

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