The Supreme Court of India has stalled the mad rush to link the Aadhaar card with one’s bank accounts and mobile phones. Without announcing a definitive end-date, it has announced that everyone who is eligible for an Aadhaar card has to continue linking it to avail of banking and phone services. However, no final deadline has been put in place. The last date so far was March 31, 2018 which is now rescinded.

This, however, does not apply to Non-resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India since they are not eligible to have an Aadhaar card. Besides not having to link it to avail of these services, they also do not have to produce this Enrollment ID number for taxation purposes, or applying for a Permanent Account Number (which is mandatory for all NRIs). In lieu, they have to convert all bank accounts in India to NRE/NRO accounts to conduct financial transactions. The Aadhaar which acts as a proof of address is still required for things like the issuance of a tatkal passport until the dates for linking are issued.

Since the mandatory linking is still in progress, the welfare facilities provided by the Aadhaar card for the local citizens continue. Keeping in line with security measures to protect the identity of the Aadhaar card holder, a Virtual ID number is generated by the Aadhaar card holder that can be submitted in lieu of the 12-digit enrollment number itself. This allows service providers to access only the basic minimum information required without compromising the rest of the card holder’s privacy. In order to be eligible for Aadhaar, a person should have been residing in India for over 182 continuous days in a calendar one year.

Since the linking was not done by everyone within the original stipulated dates, there were a lot of welfare services that were denied to its people. This lead to deaths and deprivation. As such the validity of the Aadhaar Act is challenged, thus leading to an indefinite postponement of the linking deadline. Find more information on Aadhaar card and its relevancy to the NRI on Path2USA.