Delhi High Court has asked Union Government and Delhi Government to file counter-affidavits in a PIL seeking linking of Aadhar card with property documents.

Advocates Jasmeet Singh and Sanjoy Ghose, appearing from Union Government and the Delhi Government respectively, asked for 4 weeks to take instructions and file counter-affidavit.

The Division Bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Hari Shankar also asked UIDAI to be impleaded as a Respondent in the present petition.

Filed by Ashwini Upadhyay, the petition seeks directions to be issued to both the governments to take appropriate steps to link movable and immovable property documents of citizens with their Aadhaar number to curb corruption, black money generation and benami transaction.

The petitioner submitted that The Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 cannot be secured and the golden goals, set out in the Preamble cannot be achieved without curbing the corruption and benami transaction. Therefore, it is the duty of the State to take apposite steps to curb corruption and seize the benami properties.

The petitioner believes that linking property documents with Aadhaar will help in curbing corruption as black money holders would be forced to declare their unaudited movable and immovable properties and it will take years to generate that amount of benami property again.

He also cited reports from various organisations such as Transparency International to show how benami transactions leads to rampant corruption and dismantling of the effective public distribution system.