New Delhi: On Thursday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman formally launched the facility for instant allotment of PAN card using Aadhaar-based e-KYC, as announced in the Union Budget 2020. Those with a valid Aadhaar number and a mobile number registered on the UIDAI database will be able to apply for Permanent Account Number (PAN) online.
The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost by the income tax department.
“The facility of instant PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC has been launched formally today, however, its ‘Beta version’ on trial basis was started on 12th Feb 2020 on the e-filing website of Income Tax Department. Since then onwards, 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till 25th May 2020,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
The process of applying for instant PAN is very simple. The instant PAN applicant is required to access the e-filing website of the Income Tax Department to provide her/his valid Aadhaar number and then submit the OTP received on her/his Aadhaar registered mobile number. On successful completion of this process, a 15-digit acknowledgement number is generated.
If required, the applicant can check the status of the request anytime by providing her/his valid Aadhaar number and on the successful allotment, can download the e-PAN. The e-PAN is also sent to the applicant on her/his email ID, if it is registered with Aadhaar.