The Supreme Court on Monday refrained from setting a date for it to hear either the main case challenging the constitutionality of the Aadhaar scheme, or the requests by various petitioners for interim relief against linking services like bank accounts and mobile numbers to Aadhaar.
The issues had been previously clubbed together by the apex court, which had said that it would begin hearing the matters in the last week of November. Since no date had been fixed till date for the main Aadhaar hearings or the interim relief, the matter was mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud by senior advocate Shyam Divan.
Centre Asks For Hearing to Take Place in January 2018
Attorney-General KK Venugopal, representing the Union Government, argued that the Srikrishna Committee was going to publish a White Paper (with a request for public feedback) on drafting a data protection law for India.
(The White Paper on data protection framework is now published.)
Such a data protection law might involve recommendations to amend the Aadhaar Act 2016, and so the A-G argued that it was better to review what the Committee was saying before hearing the main case. As a result, he suggested a six-week hearing starting in January 2018.
Advocate Divan said that the petitioners had no problem with the case being heard in January 2018, but that the requests for interim relief needed to be heard before then, because the deadline for linking Aadhaar to a number of services (including bank accounts) is 31 December 2017. The deadlines for linking of mobile numbers with Aadhaar is 6 February 2018.
The Centre, meanwhile, informed the bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra that it was willing to extend the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with various schemes to 31 March 2018.
However, this extension was mooted on the same terms as previously offered – i.e. it would only apply to people who have not registered for Aadhaar. Anyone who had already got an Aadhaar number would still be forced to link it to the relevant services by the deadline.
Advocate Divan, as he had previously done, did not accept this extension, and therefore pushed for the Court to hear the petitions asking for an interim stay on linking Aadhaar to various matters. The judges refused to set a date, however, and told him and the petitioners to mention the matter again later.
In the meantime, the court’s previous instructions to banks and telecom companies to specify the correct deadline for mandatory linking in messages to customers, still applies.
Also Read: Don’t Scare Customers: SC To Banks, Telecos at Aadhaar Hearing
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