The Supreme Court today refused to accord urgent hearing on a plea challenging a notification of the Department of Telecom (DOT) for mandatory linking of mobile numbers with Aadhaar.

A bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer refused to list the plea tomorrow and said that a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra was seized of similar matters.

The court asked the counsel, who sought urgent listing of the plea, to mention the matter before a bench headed by Chief Justice on October 30 when the other matters on Aadhaar are taken up.

The plea, which was mentioned today, has been filed by Tehseen Poonawala who has sought direction to quash the notification of March 23 issued by the DOT and to hold it “unconstitutional” and “null and void”.

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

The Centre had yesterday told a bench headed by Chief Justice that the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar to avail the benefits of various government schemes has been extended till March 31 next year for those who do not have the 12-digit biometric identification number.

As carried in PTI