Supreme Court rejects plea to link social media accounts with Aadhaar, says Madras High Court also hearing matter

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the public interest litigation (PIL) that sought to link Aadhaar to social media accounts. The court has said all matters need not come to the apex court. The Supreme Court observed that the Madras High Court is hearing it and every matter doesn’t need to come to the apex court. “This issue is before the Madras High Court, you go there,” the bench said. According to Bar and Bench, the petition filed by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay was taken up by the two-judge Bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose on Monday, observed that a similar matter is pending before the Madras High Court. [caption id=“attachment_7163691” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representative image of Supreme Court of India. Reuters[/caption] The next hearing is scheduled to take place on 22 October. In the previous hearing, the court had granted the Centre time to place on record its affidavit laying down a timeline within which it aims to frame guidelines on the subject. The plea filed by Upadhyay seeked to weed out the duplicate, fake and ghost social media accounts and wants the government to link the profiles on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, with Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identification number, to check the menace of “fake and paid news”. The plea also sought a direction to the Election Commission and the Press Council of India for suitable steps to control fake and paid news. The plea also sought directions to the Centre for apposite steps to declare publication of paid news and political advertisements 48 hours before an election as a “corrupt practice” under the Representation of People Act, 1951. It claimed that 10 percent of the 3.5 crore Twitter handles were duplicate, which included hundreds in the names of eminent people such as chief ministers and even the president and the prime minister of the nations. The plea also said millions of Facebook accounts were bogus, which used real photos of constitutional authorities and were used to promote casteism, communalism and separatism, endangering national integration and were also the root cause of several riots. The plea sought linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar, saying those “offend the right to know” as fake and paid news influenced choice in a “negative manner”. “Exposure to accurate information is a necessity for electors to make an informed choice, but fake news has the tendency to influence this choice in a negative manner. The publication of fake news involves use of black money, under-reporting of election expenses of political parties and candidates and indulging in other kinds of malpractice,” the petition said. With inputs from agencies