Supreme Court refuses to extend Aadhaar linking deadline for welfare schemes
March 27, 2018  20:11
The Supreme Court today refused to pass an interim order extending the deadline of March 31 for linking of Aadhaar with the welfare schemes where benefits are transferred to citizens from the Consolidated Fund of India.

The top court had on March 13 extended indefinitely the March 31 deadline for linking bank accounts and mobile phone numbers with Aadhaar.

However, it had allowed the government and its agencies to link the 12-digit national biometric identifier number of the beneficiaries for transfer of benefits of schemes funded from this fund.

A plea, seeking extension of time beyond March 31 for linking Aadhaar with welfare schemes, was made today before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra after Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India, concluded his PowerPoint presentation, claiming it would take "billions of years" to decrypt the saved data, including the biometrics.
Senior advocate K V Viswanath, appearing for a petitioner opposed to the Aadhaar scheme, took a cue from the PPT in which the UIDAI CEO said that the success rate of Aadhaar authentication in government systems was 88 per cent.

"If the data of UIDAI says that there was only 88 per cent success rate of Aadhaar authentication, then it means that 12 per cent people are excluded from the benefits in schemes linked with Aadhaar. Twelve per cent failure is too high," the lawyer said, adding that almost 14 crore citizens cannot take benefits.

-- PTI
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