Aadhaar link deadline a subsidies to be March 31 

Aadhaar link deadline a subsidies to be March 31 

Context

Aadhaar linking deadline

What has happened?

Attorney General of India K.K. Venugopal has submitted before the Supreme Court that the government intends to issue a notification on December 8, extending the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with services from December 31 to March 31, 2018

Extension

• This extension would include 139 government subsidies, benefits or services, which are funded out of the Consolidated Fund of India as per Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act of 2016. The deadline for Aadhaar linkage for these services is currently December 31, 2017
• The extension would, in all likelihood, include the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts. Government lawyers in the Supreme Court said the extension of the deadline to March 31, 2018 in the case of Aadhaar-bank accounts linkage may be done in the next few days as this involved consultations with the Reserve Bank of India. So far, private citizens run the risk of being locked out of access to their own bank accounts if they do not link them with Aadhaar by December 31
• It does not include the linking of mobile phone numbers with Aadhaar. The deadline for this is February 6, 2018

Judicial order

It would require a judicial order from the Supreme Court itself to extend the deadline to March 31, 2018. This is because the government is complying with a February 6, 2017 order of the court in the Lok Niti Foundation case to tighten up the verification process of mobile phone users through Aadhaar linkage, citing national security

Panel report by February

The Data Protection Committee, led by Justice Srikrishna, would submit its final report on sprucing up the Aadhaar Act to make it safe from data theft by February 2018.

Petitions in limbo

• The Aadhaar petitions are in limbo in the Supreme Court since 2014
• The petitions have been challenged Aadhaar as a violation of the fundamental right to privacy
• A Constitution Bench may be set up to decide all the Aadhaar issues once and for all

The decision to set up a Constitution Bench comes despite Justice Rohinton Nariman’s separate judgment in the nine-judge Bench declaring right to privacy as a fundamental right. The order directed that the Aadhaar petitions to be posted for hearing before the “original” three-judge Bench

• This ‘original’ Bench, led by Justice J. Chelameswar, had referred the petitions for hearing before a five-judge Bench, ehich found it necessary to first decide whether privacy was a fundamental right or not before hearing the Aadhaar petitions
• It referred the legal question to a nine-judge Bench, which came out with the historic judgment in favour of the common man’s fundamental right to privacy against State intrusions

Petitioners’ argument

• The petitioners argue that mandatory requirement of Aadhaar for these schemes “constrict rights and freedoms, which a citizen has long been enjoying unless and until they part with their personal biometric information to the government”
• The petitions have termed the Aadhaar Act of 2016 unconstitutional and contrary to concept of limited and accountable governance