Have Aadhaar Card? Link to PAN: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the validity of the law making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN and filing of Income Tax (IT) returns, but exempted those without it for now until the larger privacy issue is decided

Those who possess an Aadhaar card must link it to their Permanent Account Number (PAN) card

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the validity of the law making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN and filing of Income Tax (IT) returns, but exempted those without it for now until the larger privacy issue is decided.

In effect, those who possess an Aadhaar card must link it to their Permanent Account Number (PAN) card and those who have enrolled and not yet got their Aadhaar card are also exempt from mandatory linkage and the penalising invalidation of their PANs if they don’t link it.

Partial stay
The apex court while upholding the validity of a fresh provision in the Income Tax (IT) law making Aadhaar compulsory for allotment of PAN and filing of IT returns imposed a partial stay on it till its constitution bench decides the right to privacy issue connected with it.

Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of income tax returns and making application for allotment of PAN with effect from July 1 this year.

No conflict
A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, which upheld the legislative competence of the Parliament in enacting the law to this effect, said there was no conflict between the impugned provision of the Income Tax Act and the Aadhaar Act. It said that PAN card without Aadhaar number would not be treated as invalid till the Constitution bench decides the larger issue of Right to Privacy.

The bench said that previous transactions won't be affected or nullified with partial stay on the new law till privacy issue linked to Aadhaar is decided. Further, the bench also clarified that there would be no retrospective implementation of the provision to invalidate the PAN for non-compliance of unique identification number under the Aadhaar scheme.

Privacy issue
The SC’s Constitution bench is examining if Aadhaar scheme infringes on the Right to Privacy and if there is a threat of data leakage. The bench asked the government to take appropriate steps to ensure there was no leakage of data from the Aadhaar scheme as apprehensions have been expressed that there was a possibility of the data being compromised.

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