Last week, the Centre defended its decision to introduce amendments in the Act saying the move would help to weed out fake and fraudulent financial accounts.
By: Express Web Desk | New Delhi |
Published:April 28, 2017 9:36 am
The Supreme Court on Friday will continue to hear the petition challenging the constitutional validity of the government’s decision to make Aadhaar card mandatory for acquiring a Permanent Account Number (PAN) card and for filing Income Tax returns. On Thursday, the government told the apex court that the PAN will be rendered invalid from July 1 and not from when a person had applied for it, if a user does not link her Aadhaar card details.
Last week, the Centre defended its decision to introduce amendments in the Act saying the move would help to weed out fake and fraudulent financial accounts. “Today, anybody can get a PAN card with any name on it. A person can get several PAN cards — say, as Mukesh Gupta, then another as Mukesh Kumar Gupta, and a third as M K Gupta, so on and so forth,” Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi had told the two-judge bench headed by Justice A K Sikri.
Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) after procuring biometric data of the citizens. The Centre had introduced section 139AA of the Income Tax (IT) Act through the latest budget and the Finance Act 2017. The section 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 number with effect from July 1 this year.
The bench is hearing two PILs, filed separately by former Kerala minister Binoy Viswam and retired Army official S G Vombatkere, challenging the validity of an amendment in the I-T Act.
With inputs from ANI
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