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Aadhaar-PAN link deadline now March 31, Supreme Court hearing starts today

Deadline to link Aadhaar with bank accounts extended till March 31: This comes a day before the Supreme Court will commence hearing on mandatory linking of Aadhaar to various schemes.

Aadhhar bank account linking The government on Friday extended the deadline to link Aadhar with PAN from December 31, 2017 to March 31, 2018. (File Photo)

The government on Wednesday extended the deadline for users of a range of financial services, including account-holders in banks, to link their Aadhaar numbers with their Permanent Account Number (PAN) from December 31, 2017, to March 31, 2018. The latest decision will cover banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, post office schemes and brokerage firms among other financial services entities. However, the deadline for linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar will remain February 6, 2018.

The announcement came a day before a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will take up for hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act and notifications linking it to various government schemes.

“After considering various representations received in this regard and inputs received from banks, it has been decided to notify March 31, 2018, or six months from the date of commencement of account based relationship by  the client, whichever is later, as the date of submission of the Aadhaar number, and Permanent Account Number or Form 60 by the clients to the reporting entity,” said the Finance Ministry in a statement.

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The Ministry had scrapped the December 31 deadline through a Gazette notification issued on Tuesday. The new rule notified in the Gazette modified the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002 to replace the requirement of submitting “the Aadhaar number and Permanent Account Number by December 31, 2017” with a provision to “submit the Aadhaar number, and Permanent Account Number or Form No. 60, by such date as may be notified by the Central Government.”

Aadhaar linking dates extended to March 31: All your questions answered

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Form 60 is a declaration filed by those who do not have a PAN card but enter into a specific financial transaction.

In the Supreme Court, senior counsel Shyam Divan and Advocate Vipin Nair, representing the petitioners, mentioned the Aadhaar matter before a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra on Wednesday morning. The Bench responded that it will take it up on Thursday.

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Aadhaar linking with bank accounts
Later in the day, the Supreme Court Registry announced that the matter has been listed before a five-judge Constitution Bench, comprising the CJI and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan. At the previous hearing, Attorney General K K Venugopal had told the CJI-headed Bench that the Centre was in the process of revising the deadline to March 31 next year, adding that the relief would be available only to those who do not have an Aadhaar card yet.

The A-G had also stated that the deadline for linking Aadhaar with mobile numbers will remain February 6, 2018, in view of the court’s order on February 6, 2017, in the Lok Niti Foundation case. In the case, the Centre had told the court that it had launched Aadhaar-based E-KYC for issuing new connections and that “existing subscribers, can also be verified by putting in place a mechanism, similar to the one adopted for new subscribers”.

The government had also submitted that “an effective programme for the same, would be devised at the earliest, and the process of identity verification will be completed within one year, as far as possible”.

The court termed the process for new subscribers “effective” and said it hoped that “similar verification” will be completed for existing subscribers within a year. It was on the strength of this order that the government embarked on Aadhaar-based identity verification for existing subscribers.

First uploaded on: 14-12-2017 at 00:48 IST
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