Aadhaar verdict today: This is the second longest case ever

New Delhi, Sep 26: The Supreme Court will deliver its verdict on the constitutional validity of Aadhaar on Wednesday. The court after hearing a batch of petitions reserved orders on May 10 2018.

The matter was heard for 38 days and stretched over for four months. The hearing in the case started in January and went on for 38 days, which incidentally makes it the second longest case in the history of India.

The longest case heard by the SC was the Keshavananda Bharti vs Union of India matter.

This order considered to be the mother of all judgments dealt with the powers of the Parliament to amend the Constitution. It questioned whether the Parliament's power to amend the Constitution was unlimited, to the extent of taking away all fundamental rights. The hearing went on for five months.

In the Aadhaar case, the court examined if the 12 digit Unique Identification number violates the Right to Privacy, which it may recalled was named as fundamental right by the Supreme Court last year.

The petitioners contended that Aadhaar was built on a massive biometric database that comprised fingerprints and iris scans and this cannot be made mandatory. The petitioners also argued that the database was open to compromise. To back their contention, they cited various instances of data breach.

The Centre however defended Aadhaar and said that it ensured the proper distribution of benefits to millions of people. The Centre also said that Aadhaar acts as a guard against siphoning of funds while also adding that data was safe and not prone to breach.