Chennai: A day after the Supreme Court restrained the Madras High Court from passing final orders on two public interest litigation petitions seeking linking of Aadhaar with social media accounts; the latter said it was not keen on the issue in any case.
On Wednesday, a bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad made it clear that they were not interested at any point in the plea of the petitioners to link the Aadhaar ID or any other government authorities’ identity proof with the social media accounts of individuals including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The judges pointed out that long ago they had expanded the scope of the PILs and issued notices to social media giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google and WhatsApp only to “make them share information with police” in case of cyber crimes.
When Advocate General Vijay Narayan pointed out that since August last year - when the scope of the petitions were expanded - much has changed on the ground with the social media companies participating in the proceedings, the court agreed with him.
Appearing for a social media giant senior lawyer Mukul Rohatgi pointed out that the Supreme Court had restrained the Madras High Court from passing any final order on the PIL petitions.
Agreeing with him, the judges said that propriety would demand that the High Court await the decision of the SC and adjourned the hearing to September 19.
By Dravida Thambi
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