Constitutional validity of Aadhaar to be decided by the end of November

October 30, 2017

Supreme court to hear aadhaar case by end of November

The Supreme Court on Monday told Senior Advocate Gopal Subramaniam that it will constitute a Constitution Bench for hearing the Aadhaar case by the end of November. The case was mentioned by Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, who demanded that the case can be heard in March 2018. This was opposed by Senior Advocate Shyam Diwan. Mr. Subramanian further argued, that there should be no mandate for linking various services with Aadhaar if the hearing is postponed. Dipak Misra J., then said that he would attempt to constitute a Bench by the end of November. In a recent development, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had informed the Supreme Court that the Centre is willing to extend the deadline for linking various services to Aadhaar till 30 March, 2018. However, he further clarified that this extension is only proposed to be given to those who have not enrolled for Aadhaar yet. The Centre's stand was strongly opposed by Mr. Divan, Ms. Meenakshi Arora, Mr. Arvind Datar and Mr. Anand Grover. They had argued that if the deadline was being extended, it should be done for everyone, including those people who already have enrolled for Aadhaar. Alternatively, they suggested that the Centre should refrain from taking coercive action against those who did not link Aadhaar to services till 30 March, 2018. Recently, the Supreme Court also slammed the petition filed by West Bengal's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar. The court dismissed the plea saying the state cannot challenge the law made by Centre because that would result in failure of federal structure.