Giving relief to a number of bank account holders and mobile phone users, the government has decided to extend the deadline for linking the aadhaar number till March 31st. KK Venugopal, the attorney general said this in his reply to a supreme court bench consisted of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud. The extension applies to all the services including the distribution of ration under public distribution system.
Government’s order of making aadhaar mandatary for a number of welfare schemes and linking it to mobile numbers and bank accounts has not been well received by a number of petitioners who reached Supreme Court to demand a stay on the government order.
After the government’s reply today, the court bench said that an order in this regard will have to be issued by the constitution bench. Currently, the last date to link mobile number with aadhaar is 6th February 2018 and linking with bank accounts is 31st March 2017.
On February 6th, Supreme Court had asked the central government to prepare an effective go-to plan to safeguard the identities of over 100 crores existing and upcoming mobile subscribers. Also, on November 3rd, the apex court had asked the banks and telecom service providers to indicate the last date clearly in their communications sent to the customers informing about the aadhaar linking with respective services.