Centre plans to make Aadhaar mandatory for businesses, NGOs

After making PAN and mobile numbers, now Aadhaar will be needed for registering businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGO). The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act for the same.

In a bid to trace directors and promoters easily and make it difficult to form shell companies, Aaadhar of top management personnel will be needed at the time of registration of companies and partnership entities.

According to the reports, making Aadhar mandatory will bring partnerships and trusts under the same regulations, which is not the case currently.

Recently, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad indicated that Aadhaar could be made mandatory for driving license in an order to prevent the issuance of multiple licenses.

The ultimate aim of the government is to curb the menace of the black money and to achieve that goal government is looking for a mechanism to get entities with cumulative transactions of over Rs 2 lakh annually under a regulatory regime.

These recent changes or amendments will help check the possibility of any misuse of the system, the report further added.

Till now, the PAN was treated as the unique identification number for all the businesses.

Recently, the government banned nearly 2 lakh defunct companies and also identified 106, 578 directors of shell companies to be disqualified.