Aadhar weds PAN this year

While introducing the Aadhar card into the Indian system, back  in 2009, the government had no intention of unifying the identification with the existing ones like Ration Card, PAN, Voter ID.  But the current regime is quite keen on linking each and every citizen related information to the Aadhar. This will help the Unique Identification Authority of India to keep a track over the citizen’s data, be it related to filing return to getting bank accounts, sim card and such activities.

There are almost 1.11 billion Aadhar registrations, whereas only 250 million people hold a PAN card. While Aadhar is still gaining momentum, the plan to link would also benefit more than 25 million people who annually apply for PAN card separately. The Permanent Account No. (PAN) still holds the monopoly of auditing income disclosure and filing returns. Whereas Aadhar is a legal document for any address and identity proof.

The government, in the proposed finance bill listed some amendments which aimed at covering the whole population in linking Aadhar and PAN card. This move is said to have an impact in promoting a clear and transparent economy, where income and returns will all be tracked.

Certain difficulties in the linkage, would be would be the punctuation acceptance which is not a feature of the Aadhar. Surnames like D’Silva, D’Cruz, D’Lima D’sa, would face the issue while linking their Aadhar card as, it doesn’t accept the punctuated names. While pan card is all okay with the symbols, their linkage would leave some citizens unattended. Also some names like K. Satheesan is accepted by the PAN but single alphabets are not accepted in the Aadhar so it will have to read as Karthikeyan Satheesan.

Kick-starting the finance bill, Mr Jaitley has ensured maximum transparency in the procedure, but the question of clearing the mismatch issue and keeping the unique identity number a secret is still unanswered. As per the government reports, the unique identification of Aadhar would be linked to PAN by 31 December 2017. “Income Tax department is considering issuing of Permanent Account Number (PAN) on a real time basis using Aadhaar’s e-KYC facility. The proposal is at an initial stage of consideration,” Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar had said in a written reply in Lok Sabha on March 10.

Earlier in his speech, the finance minister also mentioned about there being a point where Aadhar would be the sole document serving multiple purposes. With Aadhar soon to become mandatory, hope it makes its way through the difficulties and shines in the near future brightly. The rationale that is much needed, of having a single identification to a single citizen of India.