West Bengal chief-minister Mamata Banerjee has moved the Supreme Court of India requesting to pass instructions to the BJP-led Centre not to make submission of Aadhaar numbers mandatory for citizens to get mobile phone services from operators.

Linking Aadhaar card numbers for cooking gas connection, ration card, bank account, etc. has been made mandatory and of late, mobile service providers have been literally torturing their crores of customers to either link their Aadhaar numbers with the mobile numbers or face disconnection. Mamata went on record some time back stating that asking customers to link Aadhaar with mobiles would amount to ‘infringing’ on individual liberty.

She even declared that she would never link her Aadhaar number with her mobile phone number and dared the service provider to disconnect the services. She has not joined as a party to the several cases filed by several individuals against the Centre’s move in making Aadhaar card number mandatory for receiving many services. “It is clearly a breach of individual liberty,” Mamata has insisted in her petition.

Mamata’s petition is likely to taken up for interrogation on Monday (30th October) along with several other petitions.  It may be noted that the Centre announced a few days back that the last date for linking Aadhaar number with various Centrally-sponsored schemes (in order to become beneficiaries of those schemes) had been extended till 31st March next year.