As expected, the Supreme Court today ruled out the mandatory Aadhaar linking with several personal services such as mobile connections, bank accounts, passport etc. The deadline was said to be on March 31, 2018, but the court today said that the deadline is extended indefinitely, meaning there's no deadline until Supreme Court states it again. It also said that the 12-digit Aadhaar ID is a must to access several social welfare schemes and subsidies, however, for private and public services there's no need for Aadhaar to be linked to other services. Even though UIDAI states that Aadhaar is a most secured service, time by time, several ethical hackers revealed that Aadhaar is not secured after all.
Ever since Narendra Modi's government came into effect back in 2014, there's a push towards Aadhaar linking with every service we use in our daily life. Aadhaar is already made a mandate for welfare, pension, employment schemes and passport services (even for renewal).
At least for now, all the citizens who're yet to link their Aadhaar with bank accounts or mobile numbers can take a long breathe as there is no deadline for now. However, do make a note that bank and telecom operators are still allowed you to send SMS, make calls about linking of Aadhaar with mobile number, but there will not be any deadline mention on the same.
For the unaware, March 31 was the previous deadline to link mobile connection/bank account with Aadhaar. The Supreme Court decided to take this action because of various Constitution Bench rules on a batch of petitions challenging the validity of the Aadhaar Act. The Supreme Court might probably give a new deadline when it decides on whether the Aadhaar Act is illegal or not.
Now, this act from the government is fine, but some companies such as private banks and telcos are spamming users with a load of messages every day. This has become a common affair for most of the users in their day-to-day life. Top telcos have already implemented IVRS reverification process to get the process done, making it easier for the consumers. But there's no deadline as such now.