CHENNAI: The Centre may have pledged to the Supreme Court not to use coercion to get mobile phone users to link their connections to their Aadhaar numbers, service providers are using every trick in the book to do exactly that.
In a recce of mobile phone franchisees and retail outlets across the south, Express found that service providers almost without exception everywhere are using tactics ranging from ‘encourgement’ to outright coercion to make customers fall in line with the Aadhaar must policy of the government although the matter is still being heard in the courts.
Almost at every outlet in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha, new applicants are being told that they cannot have a phone connection without Aadhaar documentation although the Centre has extended the deadline for it to March 31, 2018.