Can Aadhaar be made mandatory? Supreme Court judgement today

The Supreme Court will likely pronounce the crucial judgment on petitions challenging the validity of Aadhaar on Wednesday.

The case will beheardby the five-judge constitutional bench comprising, chief justice Dipak Misra and Justices AK Sikri, AM Khawilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.

The top court tomorrow will essentially decide on whether Aadhaar government can continue seeking it as a mandatory identification in the name of furthering its welfare goals.

Last year, the Central government had made it mandatory for all financial institutions including banks, to verify and link Aadhaar of the customers with their accounts. It also made it mandatory to link the unique identification number with welfare schemes, as well as essential services like banking and phone, in the name of weeding out benami deals and black money.

While this was seen as a move of integrating a number of services, the system faced flak from the nation, particularly due to numerous reports suggesting data breaches.

However, in March this year, the Supreme Court indefinitely extended the March 31 deadline for linking Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones.

In the same month, the government stated that around 16,65,85,421 Aadhaar cars had been linked with PermanentAccountn Number (PAN) as on March 5.