New Delhi: Tuesday's Supreme Court order extending the Aadhaar-linking deadline indefinitely came after activist-lawyer Vrinda Grover had rushed in and challenged the authorities' decision to cancel her passport for not possessing an Aadhaar card.

The five-judge bench was in the middle of a scheduled hearing of public interest petitions against Aadhaar's constitutionality.

Grover said through senior advocate Arvind Datar that she had gone to the passport authorities here for the issuance of a new passport book as the pages in her existing passport were exhausted.

She said that although her passport was valid till 2020, the authorities had cancelled it after she failed to furnish an Aadhaar card.

Grover said she wanted a new passport book to visit Bangladesh and attend a conference on gender rights and health in Dhaka on March 19 and 20.

Datar told the court that although Grover had mentioned the apex court's earlier orders against Aadhaar being made mandatory, the regional passport office refused to accept her plea.

He said the passport authorities cited the "(First Amendment) Rules, 2018" under the Passports Act that makes the production of the Aadhaar number or the Aadhaar enrolment number mandatory for the issuance and renewal of passports.

Grover, challenging the new passport rules in her petition, said she did not want to enrol for an Aadhaar card.

Datar cited nine earlier apex court orders passed since September 2013 that said Aadhaar could not be made mandatory till the court had ruled on its constitutionality. He said the authorities were breaching these orders with impunity.

These orders were passed on September 23 in 2013; on March 24 in 2014; on March 16, August 11 and October 15 in 2015; on September 14 in 2016, and on June 9 and December 15 in 2017.

On March 7 this year, the court said the Aadhaar card could not be made mandatory for students to take the all-India medical entrance tests.