The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear a plea which challenges the government’s move to make Aadhaar card compulsory. Notably, the Apex Court, previously, has not been very content with the decision of making Aadhaar mandatory for IT returns. Although, in August 2015, the apex court in an order made it clear that Aadhaar cards will not be mandatory for availing benefits of the government’s welfare schemes.
The Supreme Court earlier questioned Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi over the issue of Aadhaar when he told the court that Centre has found that a number of Pan cards are being used to divert funds to shell companies; adding that making the Aadhaar card mandatory is the only option to prevent it.
“How have you made Aadhaar mandatory despite our order saying it is optional? Don’t you have any other way to tackle fake identities?” a bench headed by Justice AK Sikri asked the Centre.
Centre decided to link people’s Aadhaar unique identification with their permanent account number (PAN), which is necessary to file income tax returns and make high-value transactions. The government had amended the tax proposals in its annual budget’s finance bill to accommodate its step to link Aadhaar with PAN.
It is to be noted that Section 139AA of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as introduced by the Finance Act, 2017, provides for mandatory quoting of Aadhaar / Enrolment ID of Aadhaar application form, for filing of return of income and for making an application for allotment of Permanent Account Number with effect from 1st July 2017.
