Deadline to link Aadhaar, phone number now March 31

The bench, comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, also “accepted” the government’s submission that it had extended the deadline for Aadhaar linkage with all schemes of its ministries/departments until March 31, 2018.

The March 31 deadline would remain for new bank accounts, too, subject to the condition that the person opening such account furnishes to the bank proof of him or her having applied for an Aadhaar card.

The revised date would apply to central and state schemes, the court said.

On the question of seeding PAN cards with Aadhaar, the bench said that position had already been clarified in the June 2017 order, in the case of Binoy Viswam vs Union of India.

A two-judge bench had, in that matter, upheld the move to link Aadhaar with PAN number, and directed that those who already have Aadhaar must link it with their PAN cards. On assessees who are not Aadhaar card holders, the bench said their PAN cards should not be treated as invalid till a larger bench adjudicates the question of whether the Aadhaar scheme was violative of Article 21 of the Constitution.

On Thursday, Attorney General K K Venugopal had told the bench that the government had extended the deadline for linking Aadhaar to “all schemes” till March 31, 2018, and said that the court may consider extending the last date to link the unique identity to mobile phone numbers till that date as well.

He said a judicial order was needed to extend the deadline for linking mobile phones with Aadhaar, as an earlier order of the apex court on February 6, 2017 had directed that an E-KYC programme launched by the government to verify phone numbers using unique identity be completed in one year. Accordingly, the current deadline had been set at February 6, 2018.

The bench was hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act and related notifications linking it to various government schemes.

The five-judge bench clarified Friday that the directions were an interim measure and that it was “of the considered view that the resolution of the issues raised before the court should proceed at the earliest, after the court reassembles in January 2018. This will ensure clarity for citizens on the one hand and for the Union and the state governments and the instrumentalities on the other hand”.

Final hearing in the matter will start on January 17 next year.