The Supreme Court on Wednesday, 26th September will give the verdict on the constitutional validity of Aadhaar. The hearing went on for 38 days spanning four-and-half months, which was the second longest hearing in the SC history. The verdict was reserved on May 10th, and it will be pronounced days before CJI Misra demits office. 

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A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which had commenced the hearing on as many as 31 petitions, including one filed by former High Court judge K S Puttaswamy on January 17, was informed by Attorney General K K Venugopal that this matter has become the "second longest" one in terms of days of hearing after the historic Kesavananda Bharati case of 1973.

"The Kesavananda Bharati case was heard for five months and this matter continued for four-and-half months. This is the second longest hearing of a case in history," Venugopal told the bench, which also comprised Justices A K Sikri, AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.

The Kesavananda Bharati case, which was heard by a 13-judge bench, by a majority of 7:6 had propounded the doctrine of 'Basic Structure and of the Constitution' had held that the amendments which may affect this structure were subject to judicial review.  A battery of senior lawyers, including Shyam Divan, Gopal Subramanium, Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Arvind Datar, K V Vishwanath, Anand Grover, Sajan Poovayya and a few others, argued on behalf of petitioners opposing the Aadhaar Scheme on various grounds.

Besides the former HC judge, the top lawyers argued for petitioners, who included Magsaysay awardee Shanta Sinha, feminist researcher Kalyani Sen Menon, social activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil De, Nachiket Udupa and CPI leader Binoy Visman. A key argument against the Aadhaar scheme was that it was violative of the nine-judge bench verdict that had held that the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right under the Constitution.

The Centre and the Unique Identificaiton Authority of India (UIDAI), the governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat and the RBI had argued in favour of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits And Services) Act, 2016 and were represented by the Attorney General, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, senior advocates Rakesh Dwivedi and Jayant Bhushan and lawyer Zoheb Hossain.

During the arguments, the Centre had strongly defended its decision to seed Aadhaar numbers with mobile phones, telling the top court that it could have been hauled up for contempt if the verification of mobile users was not undertaken by it. However, the court had said that the government had misinterpreted its order and used it as a "tool" to make Aadhaar mandatory for mobile users.

The court had also not agreed prima facie with the government's contention that the Aadhaar law was correctly termed as a Money Bill by the Lok Sabha Speaker as it dealt with "targeted delivery of subsidies" for which funds came from the Consolidated Fund of India.

Divan, who had opened the arguments on behalf of the opponents, had termed Aadhaar as "an electronic leash" and said that the government could completely destroy an individual by "switching off" the 12-digit unique identifier number. On the other hand, the Centre had said that the law was valid and allowed minimal invasion to ensure the right to life of millions of Indians by ensuring seamless delivery of subsidies, benefits and services to the poorest of poor. 

With PTI inputs