Aadhaar Review : In-Chamber Hearing Earlier Listed For Today Deleted From Cause-List, No Intimation For Re-Listing Yet

The in-chamber hearing of review petitions at the Top Court, challenging the constitutionality of the Adhaar scheme have been deleted from today's cause list.

The notification for deletion came late in the evening yesterday, i.e. June 8.

Supreme Court was set to hear the challenge to the 2018 judgement which had upheld the constitutional validity of the Adhaar scheme by a 4:1 majority by a 5-judge bench comprising Chief Justice SA Bobde, Justices AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud, Ashok Bhushan & L Nageswara Rao was to hear the review petitions in-chamber. 

Justices Ashok Bhushan, Khanwilkar and Chandrachud were present in the original Aadhaar judgment.

The judgment authored by Justice AK Sikri, which has concurrence of  the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice AM Khanwilkar, had read down some of the provisions of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act 2016, struck down a few but significant ones (mainly Section 33(2), 47 and 57), and upheld the rest.

Earlier in May of 2017, Justice LN Rao had recused himself from the hearing the petition questioning the centre's notification to make Aadhaar mandatory for mid-day meals, citing conflict of interest on account of having appeared for an interested party (UIDAI) as its Advocate.

Two review petitioners in the Aadhaar case filed an application seeking open court hearing of the case.

The application has referred to the observations made by the Constitution Bench in the case Rojer Mathew v South Indian Bank, doubting the correctness of the Constitution Bench judgment delivered on September 27, 2018, which had held that there was nothing wrong in passing Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) Act 2016 as a 'money bill'.

The written submissions, drawn by Advocate Udayaditya Banerjee, settled by Senior Advocate Shyam Divan and filed by AoR Vipin Nair, also makes reference to the open court hearing allowed in the Sabarimala review case.

On these grounds the petitioners, Shanta Sinha and another, seek open court hearing of the review.

As on date, there is no intimation regarding the re-listing of these review petitions.