SC reserves order on Aadhaar pleas

Challenging the decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN numbers and income tax filing, its opponents on Thursday said the government cannot "belittle" the Supreme Court order holding the unique identification number as voluntary.

"They cannot belittle the Supreme Court order. The sanctity of a judicial order has to be preserved. Please save the sanctity of the judgement of this court, otherwise it would have a dangerous precedent," senior advocate Arvind Datar, representing one of the petitioners, said.

He was referring to the 2015 apex court order which had held that Aadhaar was "purely voluntary".

However, the Supreme Court said it is yet to be "tested" whether Aadhaar violated protection of life and personal liberty granted under Article 21 of the Constitution, which was pending hearing for an authoritative pronouncement by a five-judge Constitution Bench.

The court, which reserved its verdict on a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of a provision in the Income Tax Act to make Aadhaar mandatory for PAN, observed that the earlier orders making Aadhaar voluntary cannot be treated as a "mandamus" (judicial writ) against Parliament.