Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12-Digit Revolution

by Shankkar Aiyar

The diktat of the high-level committee to systemise the process was not necessarily driven by a desire to make life easier for the customer. It was propelled by a promise made in the Prevention of Money Laundering (PML) Act. The Act, passed during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime and notified only three years later in 2005, explicitly states in its preamble the need to fulfil an international commitment, to combat money laundering by enforcing customer due diligence.12 Although India had made an express commitment way back in 1990 and then again in 1998, the imperative to legislate the PML Act stemmed from the fallout of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. Soon after 9/11, the world woke up to the fact that illicit funds had financed the terror attack. In a move to curb this, the US government revived the inter-governmental body, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which was established in 1989 but was comatose, to combat money laundering, terror financing and threats to the global financial architecture.