The government on Wednesday, April 25, virtually accepted that it had lied about the Supreme Court mandating that Indians' mobile phone numbers be linked to their Aadhaar.

A lawyer representing UIDAI accepted during arguments in the Aadhaar case that there was no Supreme Court order making it compulsory to link Aadhaar with mobile phone numbers.

The government's admission in the Supreme Court should be seen against the backdrop of the near-daily messages sent by mobile phone operators asking users to link their numbers with their Aadhaar.

The government justified the messages by saying that the Supreme Court had previously ordered the linking of Aadhaar and mobile phone numbers.

However, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday that this never happened. "In the Lokniti Foundation case, the SC has not directed linking of SIM with UID. But the Union government's circular says so. There was no direction by the court..." Justice D Y Chandrachud said during the hearing, according to a report in Times of India.

To this senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing UIDAI, agreed. This was an admission that the government virtually lied in a bid to foist Aadhaar on people of India.

"There was no such direction from the Supreme Court, but you took it and used it as tool to make Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users," the Supreme Court bench told the UIDAI advocate, according to news agency Press Trust of India.

But Dwivedi said that the government was right in interpreting the Supreme Court order for mobile phone verification the way it did. He said that the government had power to come with a rule that mandated linking of Aadhaar number with mobile phone number.

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Incidentally, the government didn't just lie on this matter through the TRAI circular, that clearly mentioned that the linking was done to comply with the Supreme Court order. The government officials too said that same thing. Replying to a tweet, the IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on September 10 last year said, "Yes! You need to link your mobile number with Aadhaar as directed by the Supreme Court."

The government, through a circular, asked telecom companies to start linking phone numbers with Aadhaar numbers in middle of last year. It said that the numbers not linked to Aadhaar will be deactivated. The government set several deadlines to complete the process of linking Aadhaar with mobile phone numbers but was every time forced to extend it because of the ongoing case in Supreme Court, in which the top court is hearing a constitutional challenge to whole Aadhaar programme. In March this year, the court said that there was no deadline for linking mobile phone numbers with Aadhaar as long as it is hearing the Aadhaar case.