A plea has been moved in the Supreme Court challenging the notification of the Department of Telecommunications on linking mobile numbers with Aadhaar.

The plea filed by Tehseen Poonawala sought direction for quashing the notification of March 23, issued by the DoT and holding it “unconstitutional” and “null and void”.

It also sought a direction to the telecom operators to prevent them from implementing this notification and destroy the data already collected.

The apex court had on February 6 asked the Centre to put in place, within a year, an effective mechanism to scrutinise the details of the identity of over 100 crore existing and future mobile telephone consumers.

The top court, while hearing a PIL filed by Lokniti Foundation, had said it hoped that the process would be completed within a year.

The court had suggested that the existing pre-paid mobile users, who form 90 per cent of the total mobile users, may be asked to give identity details at the time of re-charge.

The verification has become more important in view of the fact that mobile phones are now being used for banking purposes too, it had said. PTI