The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday gave partial relief to those who don’t have Aadhaar IDs in the Aadhaar-PAN linkage case. This means that if you don’t have an Aadhaar card, your PAN number will not be cancelled, but if you have an Aadhaar ID, you will have to link the two.
Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan have upheld the matter until the Constitutional Bench of the SC decides on the privacy and security matter in a separate case, which is still pending. However, the judges said that the government should look at ways to prevent leakage of personal details.
If you don’t have an Aadhaar card, your PAN number will not be cancelled, but if you have an Aadhaar ID, you will have to link the two
In the past couple of months, the government’s ambitious Aadhaar project has courted many controversies over data breaches and compromise of account data of lakhs of people. Cricketer MS Dhoni’s Aadhaar account details were also leaked.
While making the amendment in the Finance Bill, the government wanted to make Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns and allotment of PAN card, evoking many protests across quarters over the issue of privacy and security.
Also read: The man in UIDAI’s crosshairs tells us about the biggest threats of Aadhaar
Aadhaar has also come under criticism as a large number of services, including subsidies and food security, have been brought under its ambit. The government had earlier informed that all PAN accounts that are not linked to Aadhaar would become invalid from July 1.
However, the SC decided to hold on to the final judgement as another case of Aadhaar and breach of security and privacy is pending with it.
Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan have upheld the matter until the Constitutional Bench of the SC decides on the privacy and security matter in a separate case, which is still pending
Amid protests from NGOs, chartered accountants and citizens, the government had said that Aadhaar would help weed out fake PAN accounts. The government side, led by Attorney General Mukul Rohtagi, had argued that there are several instances of a single person holding multiple PAN accounts with the aim of evading taxes, which will not be possible under the Aadhaar regime.
On Thursday, the aviation ministry opened a consultation and recommendation procedure to digitise the aviation industry in India, centred around Aadhaar.
Some experts, however, are not convinced about Aadhaar’s security. “It is not about ‘can it be hacked’, but about ‘when will it be hacked’… think about the civil liberty aspect, it’s about concentration of power in the hands of the state,” said Reetika Khera, a social scientist and economist with IIT (Delhi).
Also read: Delhi HC appoints commissioner for Aadhaar-related ration card grievances
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