New Delhi, April 26: The Centre accepted that the Supreme Court had never mandated the linking of the Aadhaar card with mobile numbers of users. This acceptance on the part of the government has given the critics solid reason to criticise the government as it had earlier said that the Supreme Court had mandated the linking of mobile numbers with the Aadhaar.

The revelation on the part of government came from the lawyer representing UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) – the government agency that serves as the authority that issues Aadhaar numbers and cards.

Mobile customers must remember the daily message alerts received by them asking or instructing the users to link the mobile numbers to Aadhaar.

But the government has also said that the Supreme court had earlier made it compulsory for mobile users to link their numbers with Aadhaar. But the Supreme Court categorically refused the charge saying that it (Supreme Court) never said so. A report in the Times of India mentioned a quote by Justice D Y Chandrachud, who said during the hearing that "In the Lokniti Foundation case, the SC has not directed linking of SIM with UID. But the Union government's circular says so. There was no direction by the court..."

The senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi who was representing the Government of India on the UIDAI linking with mobile numbers accepted this which makes it clear that the Centre lied to mobile users regarding linking the numbers with Aadhaar to continue with the services. Not only this, the government also used to include in the message that the last date for doing so was March 31, 2018 which the court had ruled out saying that the government can’t “blackmail” users for linking the numbers.

News Agency Press Trust of India reported the Supreme Court bench observation on the issue as "There was no such direction from the Supreme Court, but you took it and used it as tool to make Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users."

Earlier, the government had urged telecom companies through a circular to ask their subscribers to link numbers to Aadhaar through SMS. The deadline for the same was March 31 but the Supreme Court had taken out the deadline saying that no last date could be decided for the linking as the matter was before the court.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 26, 2018 05:05 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).