Linking Aadhaar with real estate soon? Good idea, says Housing Minister
Housing Minister Hardeep Puri has said that it was a great idea to link Aadhaar with property purchases and he does not doubt that it will not be done in future. In an interview with ET Now, Hardeep Puri said, “It’s a great idea to link Aadhaar to property purchases but I am not going to make an ann
Housing Minister Hardeep Puri has said that it was a great idea to link Aadhaar with property purchases and he does not doubt that it will not be done in future. In an interview with ET Now, Hardeep Puri said, “It’s a great idea to link Aadhaar to property purchases but I am not going to make an announcement on that. It is being linked to banks accounts etc. We can take some additional steps also. It is headed there in any case.”
Upon being asked if linking Aadhaar with properties was logical, the Housing Minister said, “Absolutely, that’s the way it’s heading anyways. I have no doubt that it will happen.”
“Look no one can absolutely enforce that transactions between two individuals complies with check and balance, but what you can ensure is that large value transactions like buying property air ticket etc, those are monitored, rest are… I mean there is no economy in the world which is entirely cashless. In stable economies people don’t feel the need to carry a large amount of cash,” Hardeep Puri explained.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hinted at a crackdown on ‘benami’ properties. “The time has come to return to the poor what had been robbed of them…. I am going to create a situation that they (Congress leaders) would not be able to reclaim their benami assets,” he had said.
The Housing Minister also said that the government was committed to cleaning up the housing sector through equitable recommendations where homebuyers were victims but did not want to take action against genuine homebuilders. While the Narendra Modi government is aggressively pushing for Aadhaar to be linked with social benefits, banks, PAN, mobile number et al, a number of petitions have been filed in court on security and privacy issue. In a landmark judgement this August, the Supreme Court ruled that privacy was a fundamental right of citizens, weakening the case for pushing Aadhaar.