A lawyer has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a direction be issued to the Telecom Department and other telecom operators to stop misleading the public when it comes to Aadhaar being the only means of authentication as an identity and address proof.
This, Advocate Raghav Tankha says, is an 'erroneous and malafide' interpretation of the apex court order in the Loknithi Foundation case where a petition was filed by the NGO seeking verification of identity and address of every mobile phone subscriber, according to a Livelaw report.
The petition filed by Tankha also seeks a direction be issued to the Telecom Service Providers to stop advertisements as well as SMSs which misinform the common man about the actual significance of the Supreme court order.
The top court in its final order passed in February this year while addressing this issue expressed its hope that a process ensuring proper verification would be carried out within a years time.
On 23 March this year, the Telecommunication department in a circular declared that the SC had directed them to make Aadhaar based E-KYC compulsory for obtaining new mobile connections and for re-verifying the existing users.
The department further made it mandatory for both prepaid and postpaid users to link their aadhaar cards with their phone numbers.