SC upholds PAN-Aadhaar linking but stays operation partially

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the government's scheme to link Aadhaar to PAN but refused to make it compulsory for those who don't have an Aadhaar card or who have not yet applied for one, till the Constitutional Bench decides the privacy question. The Supreme Court said the government must formulate a scheme to prevent the leakage of personal details.

In its earlier arguments, the government had informed 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 his or her Aadhaar card details to it by June 30.

Defending its decision to make Aadhaar card mandatory for filing one's Income Tax returns, the government had earlier said the move would help to weed out fake and fraudulent financial accounts.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi HAD earlier told the two-judge bench headed by Justice AK Sikri, "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".