New Delhi: As the Supreme Court hears petitions contending that Aadhaar violates the fundamental rights of people, the Central government literally admitted that it lied about an SC order mandating that people’s mobile phone numbers be linked to their unique identification numbers, claimed a report in India Today.
Justice DY Chandrachud, one of the five judges on the Constitution Bench hearing the case, told Rakesh Dwivedi, counsel for the Unique Identification Authority of India on Wednesday, “There was no such direction from the Supreme Court, but you took it and used it as tool to make Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users,” according to PTI.
The Bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar and Ashok Bhushan, is headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.
When Dwivedi made a mention of the Lokniti Foundation order, in which SC ordered SIM cards to be verified, Justice Chandrachud observed, “In the Lokniti Foundation case, the SC has not directed linking of SIM with UID. But the Union government’s circular says so. There was no direction by the court….”
Then the UIDAI counsel admitted in court that SIM-Aadhaar linking had commenced on the basis of the recommendation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India even before the Lokniti Foundation order, the report said.
Notably, through a TRAI circular last year, the government asked telecom companies to start linking phone numbers with Aadhaar numbers. The circular clearly mentioned that the linking was done to comply with the Supreme Court order.
Later, replying to a tweet, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on September 10 last year said, “Yes! You need to link your mobile number with Aadhaar as directed by the Supreme Court.”
The TRAI circular said that the numbers not linked to Aadhaar will be deactivated. The government set several deadlines to complete the Aadhaar-mobile phone linking process but was forced every time to extend it due to the ongoing case in SC.
Coming to the rescue of mobile users in March this year, the apex court said that there was no deadline for linking mobile phone numbers with Aadhaar as long as it is hearing the case.
In a related development on Thursday, a lawyer opposed the seeding of Aadhaar with the Permanent Account Number (PAN) for income tax in the Supreme Court, saying in no way does it help in preventing financial frauds or curb black money.
According to PTI, lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan, representing NGO ‘Centre for Civil Society’, arguing before a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging Aadhaar and its enabling 2016 law, referred to various recent financial frauds, including the Nirav Modi scam, and said none of these could have been avoided by using PAN-Aadhaar linkage.
However, the court did not agree with his submission that Aadhaar was voluntary and said if a person wanted to avail subsidy benefits, then he or she will have to possess the 12-digit unique identifier.