SC Agrees To Hear PIL To Link Aadhaar With Voter ID & Property Documents

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear after 4 weeks a PIL seeking a direction to Election Commission to implement ‘Aadhaar Based Election Voting System’, to curtail bogus votes and ensure maximum participation, and link Aadhaar with movable and immovable property documents so that benami transactions can be tackled.

"We will take it up after four weeks", a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra told senior advocate Vikas Singh who appeared for petitioner Delhi BJP leader advocate Ashwini Upadhyaya.

Singh requested the Chief Justice to "in the meanwhile please issue notice to Centre seeking it's reply". But the CJI refused.

“As on date, the Aadhaar database is the most authenticate database of the citizens and chances of duplication in Aadhaar is almost negligible as it is beyond the realms of possibility and probability to fudge biometric details which is a pre-condition for Aadhaar enrollment. In the given circumstances, the use of Aadhaar details by the Election Commission will not only improve the overall health of electoral rolls by enabling deletion of duplicate entries but would also enable the Election Commission to provide additional services,” the petition said.

Upadhyay says it prevents free exercise of “right to vote” and “one man one vote” due to use of money and muscle power. (ii) It effects ordinary citizen’s rights to get elected and puts him to great disadvantage due to reduced win-ability factor as the fake and fabricated votes are generally polled in favour of candidates having money and muscle power.”

On linking with the property it said, “Since most people already 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’ (owner as per property documents) immediately. Several historical property deals might have happened in fictitious names and they will get stuck immediately. Several black money hoarders also used to register properties in other’s name (e.g. in the name of servants, some family members who are poor, etc) after getting their signatures (these poor people have no idea what these signatures are meant for). In these cases, the original property documents are kept by the ‘original owners’ and in most cases, they also keep power of attorney signed by ‘legal owners’.

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 (It will be difficult for a housemaid to show source for property worth crores).” it says.