Linking Aadhaar is now not mandatory – The Supreme Court on Wednesday has struck down compulsory linking of mobile phone numbers to Aadhaar. In India, customers who had not got an Aadhaar number till now, and were required to submit one in order to get a new mobile connection or continue using their current mobile connections, will see this verdict as a relief.
the Aadhar card number is no longer compulsory for everything, like linking it to private bank accounts, digital wallets like Paytm, or even Amazon which has been asking for Aadhaar in order to verify users for Amazon Pay Balance.
Linking Aadhaar is now not mandatory – Summary
1) With the Supreme Court verdict, telecom service providers like Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone and others can no longer force users to link their Aadhaar card to their current mobile number.
2) It also means that not linking Aadhaar to mobile phone numbers will no longer result in telecom services being stopped for the customer.
3) digital wallets like Paytm or Amazon Pay Balance cannot demand Aadhaar data from customers in order to to do a verification and allow them to continue using the services.
4) the companies which have accessed all the Aadhaar data till date, will now be required to delete this data. It is also not clear whether users can go to these companies are demand that they delete Aadhaar related data.
Services that will continue to require Aadhaar linking:
# Mandatory to link PAN with Aadhaar
# Aadhaar is compulsory for filing Income Tax returns
# Aadhaar must for availing facilities of welfare schemes and government subsidies
* Aadhaar for school education would not be necessary
While the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down linking of mobile phone numbers and bank accounts with Aadhaar was welcomed by most, it does not yet address a key question.
What happens to the data and Aadhaar numbers that telecom companies, banks and other private entities have already collected?