In India, there are various cards and documents such as Aadhaar Card, PAN Card, and Ration Card which play an important role in the country. The Aadhaar card contains a 12-digit random number that is considered as the Unique Identity of the resident. It contains all the demographic and biometric data of an individual. It is issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India. The residents can easily apply for the Aadhaar card without paying anything as the Government will not charge anything on the registration process.
Now, on the other hand, PAN stands for Permanent Account Number. It contains 10- alphanumeric characters. PAN plays an important role in the financial life of an individual. Income Tax Department of India is the issuer of the PAN card. Once your PAN is deactivated you would not be able to make any type of transaction and to get yourself enroll again for the new PAN card, you have to pay the penalty of INR 10,000. Whereas, the ration card is provided to the poor families so that they can buy food for themselves at the least price. The Government had opened numerous shops from where the poor families can get their food through their ration card.
Previously, an order had been passed that the residents have to link their PAN card with their Aadhaar card. The Government had given plenty of time to the applicants to get their PAN linked with their Aadhaar.
The Supreme Court had announced the final date 31st March as the due date to get linked Aadhaar with PAN card. But recent news has been reported in New Dehli that on Wednesday the Government has extended the final deadline as well. The new due date to link the PAN with Aadhaar is the 30th of June, 2021. The Income Tax India department in a tweet said that the Central Government had extended the due date for three months because there are many problems arising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason behind the extension of the date is that many people are claiming that they are facing various technical errors while linking the PAN card on the official website of Income Tax India.
In the past year, the department of I-T had also made an extension in the linking date from July 31st, 2020, till March 31st, 2021 because of the bad circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic which were faced by people. In August 2020, as per the data recorded, a huge quantity of around 32.71 crore people had linked their PAN card with their Aadhaar card. However, the total strength of the PAN card enrollment till 29th June was around 50.95 crore.
It has been made compulsory by the Government that the Aadhaar card will be needed at various points such as for the filling of Income tax returns (ITRs) as well as for having a new PAN card.