SC to continue hearing petitions on Aadhaar

The Supreme Court on Thursday will continue hearing the appeal filed by many petitioners challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar identification system.

Last year, the Central government had made it mandatory for all financial institutions, including banks, to verify and link Aadhaar of the customers with their accounts. It also made it mandatory to link the unique identification number with welfare schemes, as well as essential services like banking and phone, in the name of weeding out benami deals and black money.

While this was seen as a move of integrating a number of services, the system faced flak from the nation, particularly due to numerous reports suggesting data breaches.

However, in March this year, the Supreme Court indefinitely extended the March 31 deadline for linking Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones.

In the same month, the government had stated that around 16, 65, 82, 421 Aadhaar cards had been linked with Permanent Account Number (PAN) as on March 5.

It further stated that as on March 2, 8779.65 lakh current accounts and savings accounts had been linked with the unique identification number, and a total of 6811 Aadhaar enrolment/update centers were operational in bank branches.