New Delhi: the Centre on Thursday accepted the suggestion of Supreme Court to extend the deadline to link Aadhaar-mobile phone till March 31. Previously, the deadline set by the government was December 31.

The five-judge bench would start final hearings of all pending petitions demanding the authority of Aadhaar from January 10.

The top court recommended that the Linking to Aadhaar-mobile phone deadline must be extended to March 31, as has been connected for 139 other schemes.

Attorney general K K Venugopal asserted the March 31 will be the time limit for Aadhaar-mobile phone linkage which was fixed by the Center February 6, 2018.

Conversely, K V Vishwanathan, advises for one of the petitioners, said the extension was senseless as banks forced people to enroll for the unique identification number for the opening of bank accounts.

As per the TOI report, this in the course of forceful point of views from petitioners represented by a host of higher advocates led by Shyam Divan for a stay on making Aadhaar compulsory till the SC takes decision on its validity.

Before this week, the Centre has extended the time limit for linking Aadhaar to bank accounts and PAN cards. The government gave a new deadline of March 31 to link Aadhaar with bank accounts and PAN cards.

Have the new Time limits here