New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday questioned the Central government as to why it had enacted a law making it mandatory to link Aadhaar card with PAN card for the purposes of filing income-tax returns from the assessment year 2018-2019.
A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan asked the Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi whether such a law is the remedy to end the duplication of PAN cards. The Bench was hearing a petition filed by Binoy Viswam, CPI National Executive Member and former Kerala Minister, challenging the introduction of Section 139 AA in the Income-Tax Act to link Aadhaar card with PAN card.
When the AG said “we brought the land to introduce Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act as we found that same person is having more than one PAN number.”Justice Sikri asked the AG “Is this the remedy? Forcibly asking people to get Aadhaar cards when this court has already said Aadhaar is not mandatory”.
Mr. Rohatgi said this court had passed an order when there was no law on Aadhaar but now we have enacted a law and there is a legislative mandate. He said fake PANs and ration cards have flooded the market and jinxed financial transactions. A person can get multiple PANs in the names of Mukesh Gupta, then another PAN as Mukesh Kumar Gupta and a third one as M.K. Gupta. The AG also drew the attention of the Bench that this court itself had recently ordered that Aadhaar should be made mandatory to procure SIM cards.
