The Supreme Court on Wednesday raised questions over the government's decision ordering mandatory seeding of mobile numbers with Aadhaar and said its earlier order on mandatory authentication of the users was used as a "tool".
Till now, an Officially Valid Document (OVD) for address proof together with Permanent Account Number (PAN) issued by the Income Tax department and a recent passport size photograph were the key KYC documents.
The bench observed that the UIDAI says Aadhaar is a means for identification, but the "only caveat to that is that there should be no exclusion".
The bench, which posed several searching questions, asked the lawyer why the authorities were allowing private entities to use the Aadhaar platform for various purposes and referred to the legal provision to this effect.
Identifying India as a leader in the biometric identification system, the IMF in its fiscal monitor report on digital governance released here on Thursday said digitalisation can facilitate stronger governance, fiscal transparency and better scrutiny of the budget process.
The new feature, the digitally-signed QR code, will contain photo of the Aadhaar holder in addition to existing facility of demographic details, in turn allowing various user agencies like banks to verify authenticity of Aadhaar card offline.
The top law officer said that that the development will slow down if there was judicial review of every state action and "courts should not interfere in matters of technical expertise".
The Minister also advised all States and UTs that prison inmates should also be Aadhaar seeded so that various aspects of day to day prison administration can be regulated by use of Aadhaar.
The deadline now stands extended to June 30, 2018, according to an office memorandum of the Ministry of Electronics and IT.
The order said the deadline for PAN-Aadhaar linking for filing I-T returns is being extended after "consideration of the matter".
The minister of state for also electronics and information technology assured that information collected under Aadhaar was safe and secure and claimed that media reports about data breaches were incorrect.
"There is no truth in this story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure," the statement added.
The information was given by Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of UIDAI after SC asked him whether there was any official data on how many persons have been denied benefits either due to want of Aadhaar or due to failure of their authentication.
The Constitution bench is hearing a number of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar and its enabling Act.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra, hearing a number of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar and its enabling Act, said he will fix the time for the presentation after discussing the matter with other judges of the five-judge constitution
Sanjay Hegde, appearing for an individual, referred to Article 25 of the Constitution and said it provided that there would be freedom of "conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion".
Playing down reports of Aadhaar being allegedly available through Google search query of Mera Aadhaar, Meri Pehchan, UIDAI claimed that the issue had "nothing to do with the security of Aadhaar and its database".
The Union Ministry of Finance on Friday said more than 87 crore bank accounts have been linked with the 12-digit unique identity number Aadhaar in the country till early March. The deadline for linking Aadhaar to bank accounts is March 31.
The data is stored in the cloud and can be accessed from the app as well as through the website thus reducing the necessity to carry original documents.
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