NEWDELHI:The Apex Court has asked the telecom industry and the banking industry to include the last date of linking Aadhaar with their bank accounts and contact numbers in the messages they send to their customers.
The bench of justice A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan refused to pass any interim order in the matter of Aadhar linking with bank accounts and mobile connections. The court said that a final hearing in all Aadhaar-related issues would start before another bench in the last week of this month.
Asking banks and mobile phone service providers to inform customers about the last date for the linking of accounts and mobile numbers with Aadhaar, a bench of Justice AK Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan said, “Any such message must clearly specify that the present deadline for banks is 31st December and for phones is 6 February 2018.”
This was in response to senior advocates Arvind Datar, Shyam Divan, Anand Grover and KV Vishwanathan bringing to the Court’s attention to how telecom companies and Banks were sending messages threatening to freeze mobile numbers and bank accounts.
Reacting on this, Attorney-General KK Venugopal said that these claims of telecom companies and banks sending threatening messages were only oral assertions by petitioners.
Justice Sikri, however, replied, “”We all know what is happening. We are receiving these messages too.”
Mr Datar and Mr Vishwananathan pointed out that the bank linking and phone linking were entirely illegal and sans authority. The Bench said that the Constitution Bench is due to hear the main Aadhaar case in end-November and would consider these issues too.
The Bench also said that since the main Aadhaar case was due to be heard at the end of November, a stay was not necessary at present. However, the SC Bench observed that if the case was not heard as scheduled in November, it would consider a stay at that time.
Some media reports suggest that the deadlines have been extended. This is not the case. The confusion arises from an affidavit submitted by the government to the Supreme Court stating that the deadline for linking bank accounts may be extended. However, so far the government has issued no instruction or notification to that effect.
The Supreme Court also tagged the four new petitions brought before it with the other pending Aadhaar cases. A Constitution Bench will hear all the petitions, possibly by end of November.