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10/24/13 Centre seeks modification of court order on Aadhaar -
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News National
Centre seeks modification of court order on Aadhaar
Legal Correspondent
The Supreme Court on Friday posted for hearing on October 8 an
application filed by the Secretary, Ministry ofPetroleum and
Natural Gas, (MOPNG), seeking modification of the interim order
that restrained the governmentfrom making Aadhaar card mandatory
for transfer of social welfare benefits to beneficiaries.
Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran made a mention before a Bench
of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and JusticeRanjan Gogoi for urgent
listing of the application. The court directed it to be listed for
hearing on October 8 before
the appropriate Bench.
In its order on September 23, a Bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan
and S.A. Bobde said: In the meanwhile, no personshould suffer for
not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some
authority had issued a circular making itmandatory and when any
person applies to get the Aadhaar Card voluntarily, it may be
checked whether that personis entitled for it under the law and it
should not be given to any illegal immigrant.
The application said: The above order has the effect of staying
the Direct Benefit Transfer for Liquefied PetroleumGas Consumers
[DBTL] scheme, which has been launched by the Ministry of Petroleum
and Natural Gas on June 1
and is currently in operation in 54 districts as it mandatorily
requires the beneficiary to possess a UniqueIdentification for
receiving subsidy.
The Centre clarified that retail consumers would not require the
Aadhaar card to purchase LPG cylinders from the OilMarketing
Companies (OMCs) at market prices. Only those who were seeking
subsidy on supply of market pricecylinders (up to nine cylinders
per annum) were required to mandatorily obtain an Aadhaar card and
produce thesame to avail of the subsidy.
It said:
The DBTL scheme has been launched to ensure that the LPG
consumers entitlement is not diverted and to preventleakage in the
LPG subsidy, which amounted to Rs. 3,95,58,00,00,000 in 2012-13 .
Given the gap in the market price
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7/27/2019 Centre seeks modification of court order on Aadhaar
.pdf
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10/24/13 Centre seeks modification of court order on Aadhaar -
The Hindu
www.thehindu.com/news/national/centre-seeks-modification-of-court-order-on-aadhaar/article5200236.ece?ref=relatedNews
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and the subsidised price of LPG, there is a strong incentive to
direct the cylinders for commercial purposes in amanner that is not
permissible otherwise, defeating the purpose of the policy and
causing loss to the exchequer.
The DBTL scheme, by use of Aadhaar number, which provides a
unique identification of every individual, has putinto place a
robust mechanism to ensure that bogus/duplicate connections are
detected and sale happens at marketprices while genuine consumers
can avail of subsidy in their bank accounts. This will prevent
unscrupulous elementsfrom diverting the public resources for
illegal purposes and consequently reduce the subsidy burden. So
far, over onecrore [1,00,00,000] subsidy transfer transactions have
been done to over 4.5 million LPG consumers amounting toRs. 471.39
crore.
Keeping in mind the objectives for which the DBTL scheme has
been launched and implemented and the absolutenecessity of the
Aadhaar card to ensure its successful implementation the Court
should modify its order to state thatwhile no one might be denied
domestic LPG cylinders at market rates in the absence of Aadhaar
cards, the cardmight be allowed to be mandatorily sought by the
MOPNG to make subsidy payments to those entitled to the sameunder
the DBTL scheme in order to eliminate the diversion of subsidised
cylinders into black market.
Keywords: Supreme Court,Aadhaar card, UIDAI
