Oct 07, 2015, 04.43 PM | Source: Moneycontrol.com
A Supreme Court bench hearing the applicability of Aadhaar for
essential services referred the matter to a larger Constitutional
bench, and refused to provide interim relief for it and regulators
seeking the use of the identification program.
The case involved the government and regulators such as RBI, SEBI, PFRDA and TRAI seeking permission from the apex court to mandate the use of the biometric information-based identification program for telecom and financial services or for schemes such as Jan Dhan Yojana or or MGNREGA.
Opponents of Aadhaar say mandating its use could be an invasion of privacy and expressed concerns over security of users' data.
The Aadhaar, operated by the Unique Identity Authority of India
(UIDAI), is the world's largest biometric based idenfication system.
The program was started by the erstwhile UPA government and has been given a push by the current government, which has expressed its wish to widen its scope.