Aadhaar linking deadline might get extended

On December 15th of last year, the Supreme Court set a new deadline at March 31st for the linking of Aadhaar to avail various government-run services and welfare schemes.

Now, it seems that this deadline extension may still not provide enough time.

On Tuesday, the Center indicated that the deadline for the mandatory linking of Aadhaar may be extended yet again beyond the current deadline of March 31st.

Attorney General K. K. Venugopal said that, although they have already extended the deadline in the past, they will willingly extend the deadline again.

A five-judge Constitution bench agreed with Venugopal, which was comprised of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A. K. Sikri, A. M. Khanwilkar, Ashok Bhushan, and D. Y. Chandrachud.

Of course, it is still several weeks until the current deadline on March 31st, so the court has plenty of time to discuss its verdict on whether or not to extend it.

However, Justice D. Y. Chandrachud noted that, if the court reserves its verdict on March 20th and decides to keep the deadline at March 31st, then there would only be 10 more days for banks and other institutions to do the Aadhaar linking.

Aadhaar is raising other issues as well, and some of them are gravely serious.

On February 22nd, Justice K. S. Puttaswamy told the apex court about reports of several deaths that were caused by starvation due to glitches in the Aadhaar-based public distribution system.

Puttaswamy said that the court must consider granting compensation to people who had suffered due to Aadhaar, especially the families of the people who had died of starvation due to the new system.

Because of these issues, many people are protesting against the Aadhaar scheme, such as advocates Shyam Divan and Arvind Datar.

Much controversy is being raised around this new system, and the court will continue its hearing on Wednesday, where they will continue to discuss what to do about Aadhaar and the issues surrounding it.

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