Supreme Court dismisses plea to link Social Media accounts with Aadhaar, PAN or Voter ID to weed out fake accounts

A Supreme Court bench led by Justice L Nageswara Rao declined to interfere in a plea challenging a Delhi High Court order in which the court had refused to direct the linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar, PAN or voter ID card for weeding out fake accounts. (Supreme Court Order on linking of Social media accounts with Aadhar etc).The Bench of Justices Rao, Krishna Murari and S Ravindra Bhat, however, granted liberty to the petitioner, BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay, to implead himself as a party in the transfer petition moved by the Centre before the apex court in a similar matter..Social Media and Aadhaar: Notice issued in plea by Facebook to transfer proceedings to Supreme Court."We see no reason to interfere with the impugned order of the High Court. The Special Leave Petition is, accordingly, dismissed. However, liberty is granted to the petitioner to file impleadment application in Transfer Case."Supreme Court .Upadhyay had submitted that the Centre had earlier sought transfer of similar cases from some High Courts to the apex court..Social Media norms: All cases transferred to Supreme Court.The BJP leader had stated that 20 per cent of the social media accounts were "fake, ghost or duplicate"..The plea called for concrete steps so that no one can create a fake account on social media of any person, including judges, through which medium wrong or controversial information can be spread..Further submissions were also made on how fake accounts lead to fake or paid news. .The Supreme Court noted that the Delhi High Court had earlier declined to order the linking of social media accounts with Aadhaar, PAN or voter ID card for weeding out fake accounts in a plea that had stated that it would lead to the data of genuine account holders going "unnecessarily" to foreign countries..The Delhi High Court, in its order, had noted that linking of accounts with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, with Aadhaar, PAN or any other identity document requires the framing of policies or amendment in existing laws by the central government. It, therefore, refushed to entertain the plea citing that such an exercise cannot be done by the Court..Social Media and Aadhaar linkage: Supreme Court refuses to entertain fresh PIL.Read the Supreme Court Order here: