The government on Wednesday, April 25, virtually accepted that it had lied about the Supreme Court mandating that Indians’ mobile phone numbers be linked to their Aadhaar.
A lawyer representing UIDAI accepted during arguments in the Aadhaar case that there was no Supreme Court order making it compulsory to link Aadhaar with mobile phone numbers.
The government’s admission in the Supreme Court should be seen against the backdrop of the near-daily messages sent by mobile phone operators asking users to link their numbers with their Aadhaar.
The government justified the messages by saying that the Supreme Court had previously ordered the linking of Aadhaar and mobile phone numbers.
However, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday that this never happened. "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…" Justice D Y Chandrachud said during the hearing, according to a report in Times of India.
To this senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing UIDAI, agreed. This was an admission that the government virtually lied in a bid to foist Aadhaar on people of India.
"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," the Supreme Court bench told the UIDAI advocate, according to news agency Press Trust of India.
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