by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Describing Aadhaar as a major “power” to bring about an “irreversible change” in the common man’s life, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the Unique Identification Number will now be used in cases involving benami properties.
“By linking Aadhaar to Mobile and Jan Dhan, we have created such a system that could not have been imagined few years back.
“In last three years, with the help of Aadhaar, crores of fake names have been removed from the system. Now it is going to be a big weapon against benami properties,” Modi said while addressing the inaugural session of the Hindustan Times Summit.
He said that the country saw a “behavioural change” after demonetisation, which helped in converting to a “clean and healthy economy”.
“For the first time after Independence the corrupt people are scared of transacting in black money. They are scared of being caught. The black money which was earlier base of parallel economy, has now become part of formal economy,” he said.
“Such an irreversible change is getting boost from Aadhaar. Aadhaar is such a power through which this government want to ensure rights of poor. It is also playing a big role in providing subsidised ration, scholarships, medicines, pensions and other government subsidies,” he said.
He said the day the country would adopt maximum transactions via digital addresses, “organised crime would come to an end to some extent”.
Modi said “big transformations” do not come easily and for it “hauling up of the entire system was needed”.
“We can increase our ease of doing business ranking from 142 to 100 only when we take initiatives for big transformation,” Modi said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Subramanian Swamy
New Delhi : BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday said that compulsory linking of Aadhaar was a threat to national security and expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will strike down the government directions making it mandatory for availing various services.
“I am writing a letter soon to PM detailing how compulsory Aadhaar is a threat to our national security. SC will I am sure strike it down,” Swamy said in a tweet.
The Supreme Court had on Monday said a five-judge constitution bench would hear a batch of petitions challenging the validity of the Aadhaar law on charges of being intrusive and violating the right to privacy.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the hearing on the petitions challenging the government move would take place in the last week of November.
The court said this after Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the bench that the government had filed a detailed affidavit refuting all the allegations on expanding the area under Aadhaar linkage.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi had earlier this week accused the Modi government of using Aadhaar as a “monitoring mechanism” and said it will have serious consequences.
He had said the Aadhaar programme, which was initiated by the Congress-led UPA government, was designed to be a supporting mechanism and not a monitoring mechanism.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Banking, Corporate, Corporate Governance, Markets, News
New Delhi : At a time when customers are rushing to link all their bank accounts with Aadhaar, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has clarified that it never issued any such directions, it was the decision of the Indian government.
The apex bank further clarified that in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017.
In a response to a Right to Information (RTI) Act application filed by Moneylife India and carried by it on October 18, the RBI said: “The Government has issued a Gazette Notification GSR 538(E) dated 1 June 2017 regarding Prevention of Money laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017, inter-alia, making furnishing of Aadhaar (for those individuals who are eligible to be enrolled for Aadhaar) and permanent number (PAN) mandatory for opening a bank account. It may be noted that Reserve Bank has not yet issued instruction in this regard”.
Clarifying its position, RBI in a statement on Saturday said: “…in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017 published in the Official Gazette on June 1, 2017. These Rules have statutory force and, as such, banks have to implement them without awaiting further instructions.”
The government has made it mandatory to link bank accounts with the 12-digit biometric identification number. The deadline to do it is December 31, 2017.
This linking of Aadhaar to bank accounts is a process over and above the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms already followed by the banks.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in August had said that 524 million Aadhaar numbers had been linked to 736.2 million bank accounts in India.
Banks accounts in India are already linked to the tax-related Permanent Account Number (PAN), which is mandatory.
The Finance Minister had outlined a “one billion-one billion-one billion vision” for the country.
“That is one billion unique Aadhaar numbers linked to one billion bank accounts and one billion mobile phones. Once that is done, all of India can become part of the financial and digital mainstream,” Jaitley had said.
The RTI query further asked whether RBI had Supreme Court’s permission to mandatorily link Aadhaar with bank accounts. In its reply RBI said it had not filed any such petition before the Supreme Court.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Investing, Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Technology
New Delhi : In a bid to facilitate better adoption of e-signatures in the country, Adobe on Wednesday announced investment on integration of Aadhaar-based authentication in its e-signature solution “Adobe Sign”.
Citing the results of the recently conducted “Adobe E-signatures Indian Market Study”, the company said the market for e-signatures in India was growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 57 per cent and was expected to cross over 90 million transactions by 2020.
“With around 30 per cent market penetration and about 70 per cent of companies yet to start their e-signature journey, the Aadhaar-based authentication built in ‘Adobe Sign’ is the industry’s first solution to make e-signatures legally binding in India,” said Kulmeet Bawa, Managing Director, South Asia, Adobe.
“This legal validity will spur adoption among businesses that have so far had to limit the use of e-signatures to internal use,” Bawa said in a statement.
Aadhaar-based e-signature in “Adobe Sign” is aimed at helping organisations to eliminate their dependency on wet signatures and allow digital validation of users’ legal identity.
Adobe also announced the rollout of a new local data centre in the country as many Indian businesses indicated their preference to adopt a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution which is hosted locally.
“India is a strategic focus for Adobe and our engineering labs are committed to make deep investments to deliver innovative and customised solutions to address the needs of our customers here,” noted Abhigyan Modi, Vice President, Engineering, Adobe Document Cloud.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday said that the law underlining Aadhaar will have to be strengthened in the wake of Supreme Court upholding the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
“Article 21 has been interpreted again. The law underlining Aadhaar will have to be strengthened,” he said here at the conclave on financial inclusion organised by United Nations in India.
The Supreme Court on August 24 had declared right to privacy as a fundamental right guaranteed by Constitution, a ruling that could have a bearing on the case related to Aadhaar that has been made mandatory in various services.
The right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, the court had said.
Aadhaar will thus have stand the test of constitutionality as the Supreme Court’s decision on the legislation still pending.
The government will have to prove that Aadhaar can restrain right to privacy on the grounds of dissemination of social benefits or national security.
Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and other Subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016, which aims to provide legal backing to the Aadhaar unique identification number project, was passed in 2016 by the Parliament.
The NITI Aayog V-C said that at the core of the issue is mistrust in the minds of some relating to the protection and usage of Aadhaar data.
“We in the government need to work on it (removing mistrust) and try and do away with it to ensure we all are at the same page, in the same direction and for the same cause,” he said.
The government has said that it aims to achieve financial inclusion with the interplay of over a billion Aadhaar number, over a billion bank accounts and mobile phones (JAM trinity).
Digital push and financial inclusion is what India needs to be at the frontiers of technology, he added.
“The digital revolution is unfolding before us. It is up to us to use it the way we can. I do think financial inclusion is the key to achieve all,” Kumar said.
—IANS
