The Delhi High Court on Tuesday deferred hearing on the plea seeking linking of property documents with Aadhaar Card.
The development ensued pursuant to Central Government seeking further time to file its response in the matter.
The Division Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Navin Chawla granted further time to the Centre as prayed for and posted the matter for September 14.
The instant public interest litigation was filed in the year 2019 by BJP leader and practicing Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay alleging that linking movable-immovable property documents of individuals with their Aadhaar numbers would, to a great extent, help in curbing corruption, benami transaction and black money generation.
“Corruption undermines democracy and rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime like separatism, terrorism, naxalism, radicalism, gambling, smuggling, kidnapping, money laundering, extortion and dowry and other threats to human security to flourish”
-read the plea.
In this regard, the plea averred that as every citizen of our country holds an Aadhaar Card, asking them to link it to their property documents will help the tax authorities to immediately get details about legal owners of the properties immediately. “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,” the plea stated.
The plea contended that the Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution cannot be secured and the golden goals, set out in Preamble cannot be achieved without curbing the corruption and benami transaction. “Therefore, it is duty of the State to take apposite steps to curb corruption and seize the benami properties made by illegal means to give a strong message that Government is determined to fight against corruption and black money generation,” the plea claimed thus.
It further added that Executive action should be taken to warn the corrupt that betrayal of the public trust will no longer be tolerated and to reaffirm the rule of law and transparency.
Notice in the matter was issued in July, 2019.
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