New Delhi: The Supreme Court today refused
to accord urgent hearing on a plea challenging a notification
of the Department of Telecom (DOT) for mandatory linking of
mobile numbers with Aadhaar.
A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer
refused to list the plea tomorrow and said that a bench of
Chief Justice Dipak Misra was seized of similar matters.
The court asked the counsel, who sought urgent listing of
the plea, to mention the matter before a bench headed by Chief
Justice on October 30 when the other matters on Aadhaar are
taken up.
The plea, which was mentioned today, has been filed by
Tehseen Poonawala who has sought direction to quash the
notification of March 23 issued by the DOT and to hold it
"unconstitutional" and "null and void".
It had also sought direction to the telecom operators to
prevent them from implementing this notification and destroy
the data already collected.
The Centre had yesterday told a bench headed by Chief
Justice that the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar to
avail the benefits of various government schemes has been
extended till March 31 next year for those who do not have the
12-digit biometric identification number.
Attorney General K K Venugopal had told the bench that he
needs to take instructions on certain issues after which the
court had asked him to mention the matter again on October 30.
The apex court had on February 6 asked the Centre to put
in place within a year an effective mechanism to scrutinise
the details of identity of over 100 crore existing and future
mobile telephone consumers.
The top court while hearing a PIL filed by Lok Niti
Foundation had said it hoped that the procees of linking would
be completed in the near future and before one year.
The court had suggested that the existing pre-paid mobile
users, who are 90 per cent of the total mobile users, may be
asked to give identity details at the time of re-charge as
done while giving fresh SIM cards to users.
The verification has become more important in view of the
fact that mobile phones are now being used for banking
purposes also, it had said.
