The government today extended the deadline to link Permanent Account Numbers (PAN) to Aadhaar to December 31. The deadline, which was today, August 31, has been extended by four months.

The deadline had already been extended once before - from July 31 to August 31.

Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act says every person with PAN as on July 1, 2017, and is eligible to obtain Aadhaar must intimate his Aadhaar number to tax authorities.

However, those categorised as non-resident Indians as per income tax laws, people who are not citizens of India, those above 80 years of age and residents of Assam, Meghalaya and Jammu and Kashmir had been exempt from the requirement.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the validity of Aadhaar. The apex court will next hear the matter in November. The government has already extended the deadline for Aadhaar linking for availing of social sector schemes until December-end.

In a related matter, the Supreme Court recently ruled that Indians have a fundamental right to privacy. That ruling came after the Supreme Court decided the matter of whether privacy is a fundamental right must be settled before the court can rule on if Aadhaar violates privacy. The privacy ruling is expected to have a significant impact on the Aadhaar case that is currently in front of the Supreme Court.

The tax department had on July 31 stated that "unless a finding is made that Aadhaar is constitutionally not valid, tax return filers will need to link their PAN with Aadhaar by August 31, 2017".

Incidentally, December 31 is also the deadline for people to link their bank accounts with Aadhaar. Tax filers however were allowed to file their annual income returns by August 5 without linking their Aadhaar with PAN. They were to just quote Aadhaar or acknowledgement number for having applied for Aadhaar.

(With PTI inputs)

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