Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday launched the facility for instant allotment of PAN (on near to real time basis) in New Delhi, the Finance Ministry said.
The ministry stated in a release that the facility is now available for those PAN applicants who have a valid Aadhaar number and have a mobile number registered with Aadhaar. The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost, the ministry added.
In the Union Budget, 2020, the finance minister had announced to launch instant PAN facility.
“In the last budget, I had introduced the interchangeability of PAN and Aadhaar for which necessary rules were already notified. In order to further ease the process of allotment of PAN, soon we will launch a system under which PAN shall be instantly allotted online on the basis of Aadhaar without any requirement for filling up of detailed application form,” she had stated in her budget speech.
The government started the beta version of the instant PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC facility on a trial basis on February 12 on the e-filing website of the Income Tax Department. Since then, 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till May 25, the Finance Ministry stated in a release.
