New Delhi: The Supreme Court will next week hear a plea by the petroleum and natural gas ministry seeking modification of its September 23 order so that Aadhaar card continues to be mandatory for the direct transfer of subsidy on cooking gas cylinders to domestic consumers.
A bench of Chief Justice P Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it would hear the ministry’s plea on October 8 after Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran mentioned the matter yesterday morning.
The court had on September 23 ruled that Aadhaar card was not mandatory as a proof of identity for getting the government benefits under several welfare schemes, including the National Food Security Act.
The apex court by its order had said that “no person should suffer for not getting the Adhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory”.
The court’s order had came in the course of the hearing of a PIL by Justice (retd.) K Puttaswamy seeking direction to restrain the government, the Planning Commission and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) from issuing Aadhaar cards in the wake of a Jan 1, 2009 decision of the government.
13 get life term for terrorist camp hiring
Kochi: An NIA special court yesterday sentenced 13 people to life imprisonment on charges of recruiting young men from Kerala for terrorist camps in Jammu and Kashmir.
National Investigation Agency (NIA) special Judge S Vijayakumar had on Tuesday held the 13 guilty of waging war against the nation but let off five others for lack of evidence.
Of the 13, four were handed out a double life term. They included T Nazeer, the self-styled south India chief of the terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba. The case came to light in 2008 when four Kerala youths were shot dead by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Nazeer was arrested in 2009 close to the India-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya.
Nazeer is already serving a life sentence for the 2006 Kozhikode twin bomb blasts.
IANS
