Last week, the Supreme Court eased the stress accumulated by telecom companies and banks on users via frequent texts to connect Aadhaar with mobile phone numbers and bank accounts and instructed that they intimate users about the time limit for doing so.
A panel of Justices Ashok Bhushan and A K Sikri claimed that even judges are not secure from such texts, which the petitioners referred as fraction of coercion to connect Aadhaar with mobile phones and bank accounts. The panel instructed banks and telecom companies not to generate panic amongst users and asked them to state in the text that the time limit for Aadhaar-bank account connection is December 31, 2017 and for mobile phones is February 6, 2018.
Petitioners challenging the legitimate validity of Aadhaar have blamed that users were being bombed with texts intimidating deactivation of mobile phone connections and bank accounts if they failed to connect them with their UIDAI numbers. Senior advocate Arvind Datar and Shyam Divan, executing for the petitioners, required a temporary stay on such obligatory connection of Aadhaar with mobile phones and bank accounts via pressure strategy.
When K K Venugopal, the Attorney General, opposed these quarrels referring them as off-the-cuff and oral allegations, Justice Sikri claimed that such texts must not be sent without citing the time limit. “I do not need to say in the attendance of media but I am also getting such texts,” he claimed.
“We make it apparent that in the text sent by telecom service providers and banks, the date February 6, 2018, and December 31, 2017, shall also be pointed as the last date of linking Aadhaar with mobile numbers and bank accounts respectively,” the panel instructed while declining to stay the rules. These rules are below the Act of Prevention of Money Laundering making compulsory Aadhaar-bank account connection and a telecom department rule converting Aadhaar the new e-KYC for mobile handsets.
The petitioners claimed that the decision of Center to frame regulations to take legal action against people for not linking their account number with Aadhaar was against the law and requested the court to stay as per the notification of the government.