The Central government had made it mandatory to link PAN (Permanent Account Number) card with Aadhaar card. For the past couple of days, Income Tax department's website kept crashing due to an unprecedented urgency to link both cards as the return filing day closes in.
Also read: Haven't linked your PAN with Aadhar? Here's how you can do it
Part of the rush owes to the fact that people think a failure in linking both cards before June 30 might render the PAN invalid. However, that's not the case. The options to link card will remain open after June 30.
Meanwhile, you won't be able to file income tax returns for the assessment year 2017-18 if you don't link Aadhar and PAN.
So is there a deadline to link Aadhaar with PAN? No. However, the government may later declare a deadline for linking the cards. It's safe to say until and unless a deadline is set, both your Aadhaar and PAN cards are bonafide.
According to Section 139AA, Income-tax Act, "Every person who has been allotted PAN as on the 1st day of July, 2017, and who is eligible to obtain Aadhaar number, shall intimate his Aadhaar number to such authority in such form and manner as may be prescribed, on or before a date to be notified by the Central Government in the Official Gazette: Provided that in case of failure to intimate the Aadhaar number, the permanent account number allotted to the person shall be deemed to be invalid and the other provisions of this Act shall apply, as if the person had not applied for allotment of permanent account number." The act clearly says the 'deadline date (for PAN and Aadhaar linking) is yet to be notified by the Central Government.'
The new revisions also make the Aadhaar number compulsory for new PAN application.
