The Madras High Court has reportedly rejected the idea of linking social media accounts with government issued IDs such as Aadhaar. The court issued its ruling last week, saying that making Aadhaar mandatory to social media accounts or email IDs would violate the Supreme Court’s original ruling stating that Aadhaar is only mandatory for Government welfare schemes.
The High Court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed last year that sought “linking of Aadhaar or any one of the Government authorized identity proof as mandatory for the purpose of authentication while obtaining any email or user account.”
The court had made a similar ruling back in June saying that linking government IDs to social media accounts was out of the question. The Madras High Court has now expanded the scope of the hearing to include WhatsApp’s ability to track messages back to their originators for combating the spread of fake news on the platform.
With the next hearing scheduled to take place on September 19, Facebook has reportedly asked the court to transfer this case (and all related cases) to the Supreme Court instead. The hearing for that plea will take place on September 13.
