The Apex Court on Friday said that it will decide on whether Aadhaar card can be made mandatory for filing of Income Tax returns, next week. In addition, the Supreme Court also asked the government to explain the purpose for making Aadhaar card mandatory for IT returns.
The Supreme Court bench said, “How can you make Aadhaar card mandatory when we have passed an order to make it optional?”
In reply, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, “We found a number of PAN cards being used to divert funds to shell companies. To prevent it, the only option is to make Aadhaar card mandatory,”.
Notably, the Union government last month made the Aadhaar number mandatory for filing IT returns and to retain the PAN number. As per Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, this step was taken to link PAN cards with Aadhaar to catch hold of tax-defaulters who avoided taxes by having duplicate PANs.
However, the Supreme Court in its previous order issued in the year 2015 said that, “ The Union of India shall give wide publicity in the electronic and print media including radio and television networks that it is not mandatory for a citizen to obtain an Aadhaar card. The production of an Aadhaar card will not be condition for obtaining any benefits otherwise due to a citizen,”
