Aadhaar Spreads Further – Regulatory Filings Under Companies Act Will Soon Have To Be Aadhaar Linked!

In order to flush out shell companies, bogus identities and to end money laundering, Govt of India will soon change Companies Act and make all filings under it as Aadhaar linked.

This means that directors and founders of 16 lakh registered companies will be required to mention their Aadhaar card numbers while filing any declarations under Companies Act.

This means each and every Director, Board member, Founder, Investor, Chartered accountant, Company secretaries, cost accountants etc will be required to have an Aadhaar Card in near future.

As per incoming reports, Ministry of Corporate Affairs has asked all individual stakeholders of various registered companies to obtain their respective Aadhaar cards, and start integrating the same into MCA21.

MCA21 is the Govt. portal via which filings under Companies Act are done.

Aadhaar Penetration Increases

In March this year, Govt. had already announced Aadhaar as a mandatory requirement for all Income Tax filings, by amending the Finance Bill. However now, Companies Act is being modified to provision Aadhaar linkages, thereby making, even more, inroads into the corporate structure.

Experts are predicting that this move has the capability to flush out illegal money laundering and the creation of shell companies, which will enforce more tax filings and create more transparency within the corporate world.

As per officials from Corporate Ministry, Aadhaar linked corporate structure is now inevitable, and the process will be rolled out a phased manner.

To start the process, a well-defined framework is being planned out, which will incorporate Companies Act, Income Tax filing process and Aadhaar linkage of Directors, founders and Investors.

A notice from Corporate Ministry last month informed: “When implemented, all MCA21 services shall be available based on Aadhaar based authentication only. “

Why Aadhaar linked Corporate Structure?

The objective is pretty simple: To identify and track individual stakeholders, whose names are being used to create companies, and then shut them. This way, Govt. would be able to track each and every rupee being transacted and would be able to tax them accordingly.

The fact is that almost 10 lakh registered companies are not filing income tax, and Govt wants to stop this practice.

When every PAN card and Aadhaar card, along with information under Companies Act is interlinked, then there is no way any registered company can evade tax.

For foreign-based companies, another framework is being worked out.

But, What About Security Of Aadhaar Data?

Amidst such detailed planning to flush out money laundering and shell companies, it Govt. is forgetting one important detail: Safety of Aadhaar linked data.

Yesterday we reported how a leading think tank has investigated leakage of 13 crore Aadhaar numbers and 10 crore bank accounts linked with Aadhaar.

A few weeks back, Jharkhand Govt. has mistakenly leaked more than a million Aadhaar linked information of citizens.

Of course, these data breaches are not intentional, as these Aadhaar data are being mistakenly leaked. And this makes the whole Aadhaar based Operations even more dangerous – We may arrive at a scenario where Govt. is not even aware whether Aadhaar data is being leaked or not.

We will keep you updated about Aadhaar and it’s implications, as we receive more information.

You can check out all Aadhaar related news of the past here.