Realty out of Aadhaar ambit
The
Telegraph
Thursday,
December 21, 2017
In a significant
U-turn in the drive against black money, the government on Tuesday said there
was no proposal to make Aadhaar mandatory in property deals.
"The
rural development ministry had advised the states and Union territories to
explore the possibilities of using consent-based Aadhaar authentication for
registration of properties under the provisions of the Registration Act,
1908," Hardeep Singh Puri, minister of state in the housing ministry,
informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
Only last
month Puri had reportedly stated that seeding Aadhaar to property transactions
was a great idea.
As the
government was linking Aadhaar with bank accounts, it might take some
additional steps for the property market also, he added.
To a query
on linking the unique ID, the minister said, "At present, there is no
proposal to make Aadhaar linkage mandatory in property transactions."
To questions,
including one on whether the government had set any time frame to link the
unique identification number for property dealings, the minister said,
"(The questions) do not arise."
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, too, had favoured Aadhaar in real estate. "Aadhaar
will now be used against benami property... It is going to be a big weapon (in
the fight against benami property)," he had said last month.
Former law
minister Ashwani Kumar, who played a pivotal role in the formulation of
Aadhaar, said "one of the critical objective of Aadhaar was to track down
blackmoney and benami property and if the minister is stating that there is no
move to link Aadhaar with property transaction, the critical objective is
defeated. The minister must explain the rationale behind this move."
Subsidy
Explicit consent must be
obtained from persons receiving subsidies to change their bank account, Aadhaar
issuing authority UIDAI on Tuesday said in a move to avoid repeat of the Airtel
bank-fiasco.
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