Aadhaar made compulsory to check terror financing, circulation of blackmoney: Govt to SC

The government on Tuesday informed Supreme Court that Aadhaar was made compulsory to check issuance of fake PAN cards. The government emphasised that the fake PAN cards were used  for terror financing and circulation of blackmoney.

The idea behind bringing Aadhaar was to have a “secure and robust system” to ensure that the identity of a person cannot be faked, it said.

“Today, you have blackmoney which is being used in drug financing and terror financing. So it was decided to bring in a more robust system by which identity of a person cannot be faked,” Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told a bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan.

The top law officer, who was opposing the challenge to making Aadhaar mandatory for PAN card, said out of 29 crore permanent account number (PAN) in India, 10 lakh cards have been cancelled as it was found that there were multiplicity of PAN and a person had more than one PAN card which were being used for “unscrupulous” activity causing a loss to the exchequer.

He said that 113.7 crore Aadhaar card have been issued in the country till date and the government has not found any case of duplication as the biometric system of finger prints and iris scan, which was used in Aadhaar, was the only known technology in the world which is “fool-proof”.

Countering the petitioners’ objections, Rohatgi also said their “arguments on so-called privacy and bodily intrusion is bogus”.

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