NEW DELHI: Yes, Aadhaar is needed for PAN but not quite yet. The Supreme Court upheld the validity of an Income Tax Act provision making Aadhaar mandatory for the allotment of permanent account number (PAN) cards and the filing of tax returns, but imposed a partial stay on its implementation until a constitution bench addresses the right to privacy issue.A bench comprising justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan also upheld the legislative competence of parliament in enacting Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act.The bench, however, clarified that it had not touched upon the issue of right to privacy and concerns that the Aadhaar scheme affected human dignity, which, it said, had to be decided by the constitution bench.It said the Income Tax Act provision was valid subject to the outcome of the batch of petitions before the constitution bench, which was examining if the Aadhaar scheme infringed the right to privacy and if there was any threat of data leakage. The bench asked the government to take appropriate steps to ensure there was no leakage of data from the Aadhaar scheme.“The government to take proper and appropriate steps and the scheme in this regard has to be devised at the earliest till confidence among the citizens that the data would not be leaked,” the bench said. The matter is key to arguments before the Supreme Court regarding Aadhaar, with critics saying that making the unique ID compulsory violates privacy and puts people at risk of state surveillance and having their data stolen or otherwise misused because of inadequate security.The government has argued that Aadhaar security is robust and that the criticisms are untenable. “The arguments on so-called privacy and bodily intrusion are bogus,” attorney general Mukul Rohatgi has told the Supreme Court. “One cannot have an absolute right over his or her body.”On Friday, the Supreme Court bench made it clear that there was no conflict between the impugned provisions of the Income Tax Act and the Aadhaar Act.It also said PAN cards without Aadhaar numbers would not be invalid until the constitution bench decided the larger issue of the right to privacy. It said previous transactions would not be affected or nullified with a partial stay on the new law till the privacy issue linked to Aadhaar was decided. The court had on May 4 reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions challenging Section 139AA of the IT Act, which was introduced in the February budget This provides for mandatory citing of Aadhaar or enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form for filing of returns and applying for PAN with effect from July 1.The Centre had earlier said the PAN programme had become vulnerable to fraud, while Aadhaar was a “secure and robust” system by which the identity of an individual could not be faked.Linking it to Aadhaar would make PAN inviolable. While opposing the government's move, the petitioners, including CPI leader Binoy Viswam, contended before the bench that the Centre cannot “belittle” the apex court's 2015 order holding the unique identification number or Aadhaar as being voluntary in nature.