Aadhaar Act: Here's a primer on where you need to furnish your biometrics

The long-awaited Supreme Court judgement on the constitutional validity of Aadhaar is finally out.

While the five-judge bench, in the three-judge majority opinion, has effectively upheld both the unique identification project and the Aadhaar Act 2016, it has placed a number of restrictions on how who can demand Aadhaar and what services or schemes it can be used for.

While the full verdict is yet to be placed in the public domain – which would provide a more detailed reasoning on the validity of Aadhaar for each service – here’s a quick primer on where you will be required to furnish your biometrics and where you won’t.

Bank accounts: Don’t need to be linked.

In his remarks in open court, Justice Sikri went one step further and noted that changes to the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act), which mandated Aadhaar linking with bank accounts, were unconstitutional and do not satisfy the legal test of proportionality. This, incidentally, is an argument The Wire has made before.