PIL To Link Properties With Aadhaar: Delhi High Court Grants Further Time To Centre To File Reply

The Delhi High Court today granted further time to the Central Government to file its counter affidavit in the PIL seeking linking of property documents with Aadhaar Card.

The Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla has now fixed the case for hearing on 14th September. Notice in the matter was issued in July 2019.  

Filed by Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, the petition seeks directions to be issued to the Central government as well as the Delhi government to take appropriate steps to link movable and immovable property documents of citizens with their Aadhaar number to curb corruption, black money generation and benami transaction.

The petitioner submitted that the Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 cannot be secured and the golden goals, set out in the Preamble cannot be achieved without curbing the corruption and benami transaction. Therefore, it is the duty of the State to take apposite steps to curb corruption and seize the benami properties.

The petitioner believes that linking property documents with Aadhaar will help in curbing corruption as black money holders would be forced to declare their unaudited movable and immovable properties and it will take years to generate that amount of benami property again. He also cited reports from various organisations such as Transparency International to show how benami transactions leads to rampant corruption and dismantling of the effective public distribution system.

"As on today, every citizen of our country have an Aadhaar number, asking them to link it to their property documents is a better option. The main advantage of this strategy is that the tax authorities will get details about 'legal owners' immediately," the plea states.

It adds that once the Aadhaar linkage happens, tax authorities can approach the 'legal owners' and it can be treated as benami property if the 'legal owners' are unaware or denies knowledge of the ownership'. Even if the 'legal owner' takes onus and claims that it is his property, he needs to show the 'source of income' for buying that property.

Case Title: Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay v. Union of India & Anr.