Deadline to link Aadhaar with PAN is June 30.
The government has extended the deadline to link Aadhaar with welfare schemes and other government facilities by three months. Now you can link Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), PAHAL for LPG subsidy, provident fund and other government subsidies with the 12-digit Aadhaar number by June 30. The earlier deadline was March 31. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had on Tuesday extended the deadline for linking of PAN with Aadhaar to June 30. The deadline to link phone, passport and bank accounts with Aadhaar number had, however, been extended indefinitely by the Supreme Court till the judgement is announced.
To sum up, here are the new deadlines you need to remember:
Aadhaar linking with welfare schemes: June 30
Aadhaar linking with PAN number: June 30
Aadhaar linking with SIM card, passport, bank account: Extended indefinitely till Supreme Court passes judgment
While the government has been keen to mandate the use of Aadhaar for everything from filing income tax to the registration of mobile phone numbers and booking railway tickets, campaigners and technology experts have time and again expressed concern about the breaching of privacy and safety of data.
Five judges have been hearing a batch of petitions against the Aadhaar law. UIDAI chief Ajay Bhushan Pandey wrapped up the presentation in the courtroom on Tuesday to allay concerns of about data security surrounding Aadhaar. Terming Aadhaar's data security "infallible", Mr Pandey had told the court that it was virtually impossible to break into the Aadhaar data and would take billions of years to decrypt the 2048-bit encryption. Following this, the bench asked petitioners to compile their queries in a questionnaire format. Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra asked the questionnaire be handed over to Mr Pandey who would have to send across the written answers before the next court hearing on Tuesday next week.