Aadhaar faces biggest test in SC today: 10 things you should know

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Wednesday hear a batch of pleas seeking a stay on the government's decision of mandatory linking of Aadhaar with various welfare schemes.

Here are 10 things you should know

1. Aadhaar authentication is being used as the primary identity verification mechanism by many systems such as banks, telecom companies, PDS, Income Tax Department, employees attendance etc.
    
2. The Centre has extended the deadline up to March 31 next year for mandatory linking of the national biometric identifier to avail the benefit of various services and welfare measures.
    
3. A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra will today begin hearing the matter five years after the first petition was filed against Aadhaar.
    
4. On November 27, the apex court had said it may consider setting up a constitution bench to hear the pleas challenging the Centre's move to make Aadhaar card mandatory for availing various services and benefits of welfare schemes.
    
5. The government will seek to convince the Supreme Court about Aadhaar's utility. Aadhaar faces challenges on the privacy front with some critics concerned about access to the information of individuals.
    
6. The privacy concerns have got further fuel due to the recent expose by a news paper. An investigation into the Aadhaar security loophole by the Tribune has showed that details of the 12-digit unique identification number is easily accessible by paying as low as Rs 500.
    
7. Though aadhaar issuing body UIDAI has negated the claims made by the news paper, it recently introduced a new concept of 'Virtual ID' which Aadhaar-card holder can generate from its website and give for various purposes, including SIM verification, instead of sharing the actual 12-digit biometric ID.
    
8. UIDAI has set in place a 'biometric lock' as an additional layer of protection against outside intrusions or breach.
    
9. UIDAI has also announced face- recognition based authentication for Aadhaar users for an additional layer of protection against outside intrusions or breach. The new authentication method will be launched by July 1, 2018.
    
10. Earlier, two modes of biometric authentication, fingerprint authentication and iris authentication, were allowed under Aadhaar. The face recognition as additional means of Aadhaar authentication will be used in combination with existing ways such as fingerprint or iris scan.