The government has initiated a series of measures, including allowing re-verification at subscribers' doorstep and One Time Password (OTP) based authentication of existing users, to make the entire exercise easier for telecom subscribers.
The bench also said that a seven-judge bench needed to be constituted for authoritatively deciding a batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar scheme on grounds including that it infringes on the Right to Privacy of citizens.
E-KYCs and Aadhaar authentication are of crucial importance to the fin-tech companies as the recent RBI instructions require strict KYCs for these players to function in the market.
The key gain from using Aadhaar will be a drastic cut in impersonation and fictitious identities, thereby plugging a major loophole through which a lot of leakage in subsidy payment takes place.
It is widely believed that Nandan Nilekani's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saved the ambitious Aadhaar project from oblivion or a takeover by the home ministry.
It emerges that not only does the CIDR project fails the test of fairness, justness and reasonableness besides the test of not being fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary; it also fails the test of Arthashastra, Hadith and the Bible.
The last date for linking Aadhaar for mobile services will remain February 6 as per the Supreme Court order.
The AG said that due to Aadhaar, government has saved over Rs 50,000 crore on the schemes to benefit the poor as well as the pension schemes.
Jaitley said the cap on cash transactions is being reduced to curb generation of black money and the move to introduce electoral bonds is for cleansing the political funding
Linking all accounts is a difficult and costly task for brokers
The protection of individual security and privacy is critical to building safe online systems, say Mitchell Baker and Ankit Gadgil.
'The attempt to make Aadhaar mandatory has now emerged as an act of bullying by government agencies, turning citizens into subjects by making fundamental rights conditional on biometric identification,' says Gopal Krishna.
Aadhaar is a 12 digit individual identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India on behalf of the government of India.
New schemes allows consumers without Aadhaar to receive cash directly in their bank accounts
In a last ditch attempt before the issue moves to a larger Constitutional bench, the government on Wednesday made a fresh pitch before Supreme Court for allowing voluntary use of Aadhaar cards for welfare schemes, saying it was prepared to give an affidavit by the "highest functionary" by Thursday morning that nobody will be deprived of benefits for lack of it.
Sharad Sharma, co-founder and governing council member at iSPIRT, on Tuesday admitted using anonymous accounts to troll on social media those who raised questions on Aadhaar and its applications by the government.
AAdhar cannot be successful unless there is proper coordination at the helm.
The Centre also referred to various international economic reports and surveys to emphasise on the need for Aadhaar.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said there was no urgency to hear the matter after Attorney General K K Venugopal told the bench that the Centre will extend the September 30 deadline.
A key argument against the Aadhaar scheme was that it was violative of the nine-judge bench verdict that had held that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Having made Aadhaar mandatory for receiving subsidised cooking gas (LPG) in 19 districts, Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily on Wednesday said the unique identification card will no longer be a must for giving subsidises unless cleared by the Supreme Court.
The ministry, under Ravi Shankar Prasad, will soon prepare a Cabinet note for bringing Aadhaar under its administrative jurisdiction.
'The most valuable personal sensitive information of present and future citizens has been made available to foreign data firms and governments and non-State actors for all time to come,' says Gopal Krishna.
The apex court made it clear that banks and telecom service providers will have to indicate the last date of linking bank accounts and mobile numbers with Aadhaar in their communications with customers.
Venkaiah Naidu said Aadhaar will not be made mandatory till the entire population gets such cards or UID numbers.
The 16-digit randomly generated number by the Aadhaar system was supposed to be introduced by the UIDAI on March 1 and mandatorily deployed by companies using Aadhaar by June 1.
Those people without the Aadhaar number have found a loophole in the system
The government hurried through the scheme, which required a complete re-engineering of welfare delivery, severely challenging its implementation.
Private firms' offer to print Aadhaar details on plastic card a breach of law
In order to reduce government litigations, the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said the GST Council has fixed a monetary limit for filing appeals by the tax department before the various appellate authorities. It has recommended a monetary limit of Rs 20 lakh for GST Appellate Tribunal, Rs 1 crore for the High Court and Rs 2 crore for the Supreme Court for filing of appeals by the department before these legal forums, she said after the 53rd GST Council meeting held in New Delhi.
He also made an appeal not to 'overblow' the issue of data breach.
The state government has ordered an inquiry into the matter.
Supreme Court allows more instruments to use the biometric card.
Aadhaar is a creation of the previous Congress-led government.
The amendment makes it clear that if the linking of Aadhaar is not done by the date to be notified by the govt, the account of the individual would be blocked.
In a major breakthrough, the NIA had on Wednesday arrested Muzammil Shareef, the key conspirator in the blast case.
It also said that PAN card without Aadhaar number would not be treated invalid till the Constitution bench decides the larger issue of Right to Privacy.
Diversified business house Trident Group would become the first corporate to use Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) for disbursal of salaries to its employees.
It pulls out past Supreme Court orders that run contrary to the latest one.
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