31st August 2017 is announced to be the last date to link your Aadhaar card with the permanent account number (PAN). Earlier the deadline was set to 31st July 2017 that was further extended as per the people’s request and inability to link the Aadhaar and PAN because of the name issues.
With the recent verdict of Indian Supreme Court on Privacy being the fundamental right there are many people who think that it might have the effect on the orders of linking the Aadhaar Card and PAN card, avoiding it. But, these rumours were never given any authentication by the government and for now, linking of Aadhaar Card and PAN card is mandatory.
Linking Aadhaar Card and PAN Card
The matter of deciding whether the linking of Aadhaar with the PAN violates the Right to privacy was taken to the three-judge benches and this nine judge bench pronounced that the verdict stating Right to Privacy being a fundamental right and is an integral part of the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of India in Article 21 2017. Although the decision has not yet been taken and Supreme Court is still deciding to review the impact of this Aadhaar scheme and until the decision, the process will forego as per the deadline.
Until any decision is taken by the Supreme Court or the three judge bench, it is mandatory for everyone to link the Aadhaar with PAN. As per the officials and Tax partners and leaders of People Advisory services, supreme court answers that the Right to privacy has nothing to do with the validity of either Aadhaar Act or Section 139AA of the Income Tax act making the Aadhaar mandatory for income-tax filing and PAN. So, until the verdict is passed, Aadhaar is still not constitutionally valid and thus, tax return filers are still needed to be linked with PAN and Aadhaar by 31st August 2017 as per the CBDT press release dated 31st July 2017 for the processing of the Tax returns.
Also, if someone fails to link the Aadhaar card with their PAN numbers till 31st August 2017, PAN cards still be valid because there is no specific date mentioned under the Section 139AA(2) of Income-Tax Act.
The motto of Indian government behind the linking of the Aadhaar and PAN is to solve the problem of people having multiple PAN cards to file the tax returns. As Aadhaar card is based on the biometrics, the chance of duplication is measurably less as compared to PAN.
NOTE – Linking of the bank accounts with the Aadhaar Card is also mandatory and the deadline set for that by the government is 31st December 2017.
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