Chennai, April 1 (IANS): The Madras High Court on Thursday refused to accept the plea of the BJP's Puducherry unit that the mobile numbers of voters connected to Aadhaar were collected by party workers during the door-to-door campaign and ordered a probe.

A bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthil Kumar Ramamoorthy called upon the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to answer as to how the details provided by the citizens of the country with the hope that the confidentiality will be maintained were leaked.

It also asked the Election Commission to move ahead with the breach of code of conduct, and continue the criminal investigation initiated against the Puducherry unit of the BJP.

The orders were passed following a PIL filed by the CPI-M youth wing, the Democratic Youth Federation of India's Puducherry leader A. Anand, complaining that BJP workers had illegally collected telephone details of voters from Aadhaar data. He has also complained that these mobile phone number was used to seek votes for BJP candidates in respective constituencies by creating Whatsapp groups.