12850 - SC to hear plea for Aadhaar-based voting system - Business Standard

SC to hear plea for Aadhaar-based voting system implementation in 4 weeks

The plea alleged that duplicate voting was prevalent in the country

Press Trust of India  |  New Delhi 

Last Updated at February 19, 2018 21:43 IST

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The Supreme Court on Monday said it will hear after four weeks a plea seeking implementation of an Aadhaar-based voting system in elections in order to curtail bogus and duplicate voting in the spirit of the election law. The petition was filed before a bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud which kept the matter for hearing in March.

The plea, filed by advocate and BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, has sought direction to the Election Commission of India to take appropriate steps to implement an 'Aadhaar based election voting system' to ensure maximum participation in election and curtail fake, bogus and duplicate voting in the spirit of section 17-18 of the Representation of People Act, 1950.

It sought a direction to the Centre through Ministry of Law and Justice to take appropriate steps to link movable and immovable property documents of citizens with their Aadhaar number to curb corruption, black money generation and 'benami' transactions.

Direct the Election Commission of India to take appropriate steps to link the election identity card of the citizens with their Aadhaar number to curtail fake, fabricated, and duplicate votes, it said.

The plea alleged that duplicate voting was prevalent in the country as the current system has not been able to control booth capturing and bogus voting. "The current system is better but not the best. Aadhaar based election-voting system has more authentication of voters, better security of voting process, it can protect the voted data and most importantly, the voter can cast his vote from any corner of the country," the plea said.

The proposed Aadhaar-based voting system involves fingerprint of the voter which is saved in the government's database with an individual's Aadhaar number, the petition said.

First Published: Mon, February 19 2018. 21:42 IST

12207 - Aadhaar can be sole ID proof for voting: Ex-CEC Krishnamurthy - Economic Times

Aadhaar can be sole ID proof for voting: Ex-CEC Krishnamurthy

PTI|

Updated: Oct 17, 2017, 03.10 PM IST

"ID proof may be Aadhaar card when you are using it for all other purposes. It can be used for election also," former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy said.

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Former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy today favoured doing away with voter ID card and said Aadhaar can be the sole identity proof for voting.

At present, the Election Commission allows a number of documents, including passport, as identity proof in the absence of voter ID card.

"Today, we are having too many cards leading to so many complications. Don't introduce too many complications in the system. Time has come we should think of only one card, whatever be the card," Krishnamurthy said.

"ID proof may be Aadhaar card when you are using it for all other purposes. It can be used for election also," he said.

"Aadhaar itself can be made as an election ID card. Why do you want to have election ID card as well as Aadhaar? If all voters are covered by Aadhaar, then you should eliminate voter ID card and make Aadhaar the only ID for electoral purposes," Krishnamurthy told .

He said till the entire country is covered by Aadhaar, both the cards should be allowed as ID proof for voting.

"You can set a particular cut-off date, may be 2019 or 2020 or whatever, everybody should have Aadhaar card (for voting)", the former CEC said.

He also said there was no need for the Election Commission to "delink" Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat Assembly polls, and termed it an "avoidable controversy".

Krishnamurthy argued that Himachal Pradesh election could have been postponed by a few days to club it with that in Gujarat.

"I don't know why they should be delinked because it was an avoidable controversy, I thought. There was no need to delink them," the former CEC said.

"When the convention (holding elections to Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat simultaneously) has been so, it could have been easily followed, or even if there was difficulty, the Himachal elections could have been postponed by four or five days," he said.

The EC had on October 12 announced that the Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh would be held in a single phase on November 9 and the results would be declared on December 18.

The poll panel did not announce the dates for Assembly elections in Gujarat, but Chief Election Commissioner A K Joti had said that the elections will be held before December 18.

On BJP MP Varun Gandhi reportedly terming the poll panel a "toothless tiger", Krishnamurthy said, "There is no power (with the poll panel) to deregister (derecognise parties), but whether it makes it (EC) toothless animal, I don't know."

Gandhi had reportedly said the Election Commission was a "toothless tiger" as it had never derecognised any political party for not submitting poll expenditure details within the stipulated time.

"Yes, there is no power (to derecognise parties), and that power should be available. Law can be amended to say that if you (EC) have power to register, you can deregister a party under certain circumstances," Krishnamurthy added

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9935 - Checking frauds? Govt looks at ways to link Aadhaar and PAN - Hindustan Times

Checking frauds? Govt looks at ways to link Aadhaar and PAN

• Timsy Jaipuria, Hindustan Times, New Delhi |  Updated: May 05, 2016 13:34 IST

The linking of Aadhaar with PAN would help the department to weed out duplicate PANs, and curb tax evasion. (PTI File)

In a bid to link 12-digit unique identity number – Aadhaar -- with the permanent account numbers (PANs), the income tax (I-T) department is “brainstorming to come up with more incentives” for taxpayers, which will also reduce the direct interface with the taxman.

Aadhaar is the number issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is unique to every individual as it captures biometric information like fingerprints and iris scan.

PAN is a 10-digit alpha-numeric number allotted by the I-T department and is mandatory for conducting tax transactions and high-value financial transactions.

The linking of Aadhaar with PAN would help the department to weed out duplicate PANs, and curb tax evasion.

A senior tax department official confirming the development said that the Income Tax Act does not have the provisions to make it mandatory to ask people to submit their Aadhaar numbers.

“The department is of a view that by offering more incentives, genuine taxpayers would be encouraged to provide Aadhaar numbers on ITR forms. This would also help the department to maintain the database where bank accounts, PAN, ITR, and Aadhaar would be linked, and it would help in forming a seamless tracking system to catch hold of scrupulous entities,” the official added.

As per the I-T department data, more than 240 million PAN numbers have been issued, and less than 10% of them file income-tax returns (ITRs). Out of this, around 11,00,000 have been declared invalid due to various reasons, including multiple issuance of PANs to the same taxpayer.

Last year, the I-T department had introduced a column in the ITR form, where the taxpayers can mention their Aadhaar number. But, it is voluntary.

In the PAN application form as well, there is an additional column to provide Aadhaar number. But taxpayers have an option to leave that blank as well.

As an incentive, the department said that linking of the Aadhaar with PAN would spare them from sending the tax verification papers to Bengaluru.

It added that providing Aadhaar number would help in faster processing of the returns and early issuance of tax refunds.

The department also activated the Aadhaar and net banking-based e-filing verification system for taxpayers to file the first appeal before a tax officer, in case of disputes.

With over one billion Aadhaar numbers generated, which covers around 93% of adults, so far, the department is hopeful that linking of Aadhaar with PAN would help in stopping duplication of more PANs, and thus the government is mulling more incentives to make the taxpayers voluntarily submit their Aadhaar numbers.

The department believes that a broad database of Aadhaar can be a ready source to cross-check the identities of genuine people.

Aadhaar, has also been identified as a new weapon in the government’s armour to fight black money, put an end to benami transactions and check frauds. So far 254.8 million bank accounts are linked with Aadhaar.

“Since it is now the largest online digital identity platform in the world, the tax department wants to use the Aadhaar database to expand tax research further,” the official added.

9929 - Tax department’s dilemma: How to ensure universal seeding of Aadhaar with PAN - Live Mint

 Wed, May 04 2016. 10 18 AM IST

Tax department’s dilemma: How to ensure universal seeding of Aadhaar with PAN  

Tax department wants to ensure that all PANs are seeded with Aadhaar to weed out duplicate PANs and check tax evasion

Remya Nair

New Delhi: The tax department is faced with a dilemma.

It wants to ensure that all permanent account numbers (PAN) are seeded with Aadhaar to weed out duplicate PANs and check tax evasion. However, it does not have any powers under the Income Tax Act to compulsorily seek the Aadhaar number from taxpayers.

Because of this, so far, only around one-third of PANs have been seeded with Aadhaar.

To counter this, it is exploring ways to further incentivize taxpayers to encourage them to voluntarily link their Aadhaar to PAN.

According to data available with the tax department, more than 24 crore PAN numbers have been issued by the tax department. Of this, around 11 lakh have been declared invalid due to various reasons, including multiple issuance to the same taxpayer.

With Aadhaar, issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), also crossing the one billion coverage mark, the tax department is hopeful that it will successfully cross-tab PAN and Aadhaar and successfully weed out more duplicate issuances.

The income tax department has been using technology to match personal details to ensure that duplicate PANs are not issued. However, some taxpayers managed to get more than one PAN by making some changes in their personal information at the time of submission of the PAN application. By linking PAN with Aadhaar—a 12-digit number unique to every individual as it captures biometric information like fingerprints and iris scan—the tax department is trying to ensure that one individual holds only one PAN.

PAN is a 10-digit alpha-numeric number allotted by the income tax department and is mandatory for conducting tax transactions and high-value financial transactions. This helps the tax department detect tax evasion and circulation of black money.

“The Income Tax Act empowers us to mandatorily ask for the PAN number. But it does not give us the powers to mandatorily ask taxpayers about their Aadhaar number,” said an income tax department official, who did not wish to be identified. “The law ministry has also pointed this out. So, we are looking at ways to further incentivize taxpayers to give their Aadhaar number voluntarily,” the official added.

At present, the tax department collects information on Aadhaar through various procedural incentives. For instance, there is an additional column in the PAN application form for taxpayers to give their Aadhaar number. However, this is not mandatory. Also, there is a similar column in the income tax return form, but here again, the taxpayer has the option to leave it blank.

As an incentive, the tax department had introduced a provision last year, wherein taxpayers could digitally verify the tax return form using Aadhaar-based authentication without having to post their signed tax return acknowledgement to the central processing centre in Bengaluru.

B.M. Singh, former chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, said using Aadhaar will help in checking the proliferation of duplicate PANs.

“The fruitful approach will be to incentivize taxpayers to disclose their Aadhaar. The tax department should look at more ways to encourage taxpayers to voluntarily disclose Aadhaar,” he said.

Remya Nair

8148 - I-T dept plans an app to map all taxpayer details via PAN - Live Mint

I-T dept plans an app to map all taxpayer details via PAN

Income Tax Business Application to allow assessing officer get all details about taxpayer in a single window

Remya Nair 

The tax department has already started seeding Aadhaar numbers with the PAN database to weed out duplicate PANs. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

Soon, the taxman will be able to access all the financial information of taxpayers in a single window.

The income-tax (I-T) department is embarking on a project called Income Tax Business Application to collate all information on a taxpayer from various sources based on the permanent account number (PAN).

Of the total 30 million tax returns filed annually, the I-T department selects 300,000- 400,000 cases annually for scrutiny, based on risk profiling by the tax department. For this purpose, currently, the tax department collects all such information—but at a macro level.

“We are trying to improve internal data mining. We get information from various sources like tax deducted at source, annual information return (AIR), CEIB (Central Economic Intelligence Bureau), excise, service tax and value-added tax. But they are all in silos,” said Anita Kapur, chairperson of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Tuesday.

“We have started a pilot project wherein an assessing officer will get the entire information about a taxpayer whose tax return has been selected for scrutiny. It will include all financial transactions data of an individual or entity, including human intelligence collected. We hope to make it operational by the next calendar year,” she said.

The project is being rolled out in phases. The department has already started seeding Aadhaar numbers with the PAN database to weed out duplicate ones.

To incentivize taxpayers to voluntarily disclose Aadhaar numbers, the department has proposed a plan wherein the Aadhaar number of taxpayers will be used to validate online tax returns filed by taxpayers. So taxpayers will not need to send signed acknowledgement copies of the I-T returns to the Central Processing Centre in Bengaluru.

“If a taxpayer gives his Aadhaar and mobile numbers, we will send a one-time password to the taxpayer once he uploads his I-T return on the website. The taxpayer can then validate their return using the one-time password,” Kapur said.

Taking a strong stand against tax evaders, Kapur said the tax department has no option but to take a tough action against evaders to encourage compliance. “We try to ensure that our tax regime remains non-intrusive....but there are certain people or cases against whom intrusive action is required. Because not everybody is willingly compliant,” she said.

Sunil Jain, Partner at J Sagar Associates, a law firm, said the department gets a lot of information from various sources. “Many institutions are obligated to report a transaction above a certain threshold level. So the tax department has a lot of information. But once it accumulates and collates all this information, it will have to talk to the assessee and ask for an explanation,” he said.

“This is going to increase the workload of the tax department and you will need a corresponding increase in manpower. And staffing and training continues to remain a major challenge for the tax department,” he said.

7823 - Get PAN card with Aadhaar or voter ID - Telegraph India

Get PAN card with Aadhaar or voter ID

New Delhi, April 20 (PTI): An elector's photo identity card or Aadhaar will now be enough to obtain PAN cards, with the Centre relaxing cumbersome procedures requiring multiple documents. Till now, the EPIC (voter card) and Aadhaar cards were only considered proof of identity and address, not age. The change was made through a notification by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, which oversees the income-tax department that issues PAN cards. "The new notification means that, henceforth, having an EPIC or Aadhaar will be enough to obtain the PAN card. The two documents will be valid as proof of an individual's identity, address and date of birth.... The EPIC and Aadhaar are now unique and all-purpose identifiers," a tax official said. The new notification also lists some other documents that will be accepted as age proof. These include a "photo identity card issued by the central government or state government or central public sector undertaking or state public sector undertaking or the central government health service scheme photo card or ex-servicemen contributory health scheme photo card". "So, effectively now, there are a total of 12 identity documents which could be used to establish the date of birth of an individual applying for a PAN card compared to eight earlier. But for a common man, who is not in government service, only an EPIC or Aadhaar is required," the tax officer said. He said the Centre was on a mission to bring the three unique identifiers - EPIC, Aadhaar and PAN - on one platform and link their databases. The aim is to thwart duplicity or forgery in any of the documents essential to get the benefits of central schemes.