PAN-Aadhaar linking deadline this month: The 3 mistakes that can lead to trouble

According to Section 139 AA (2) of the Income Tax Act, every person having a PAN as on July 1, 2017, and eligible to obtain Aadhaar, must intimate his Aadhaar number to the tax authorities.

• There can be at least three cases in which PAN card and Aadhaar linking will fail
• The only solution in cases of data mismatch is to get it rectified

NEW DELHI: You run the risk of making your Permanent Account Number (PAN) "inoperative" or useless till the time it is linked with Aadhaar number within the deadline of September 30. The linkage can be done easily on the income tax department's website or even through SMS.

However, a number of PAN card holders are having trouble doing the linkage simply because there is a mismatch in the records of either the Income Tax department or the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI). The I-T department issues PAN cards while the UIDAI issues Aadhaar cards.

There can be at least three types of cases where PAN-Aadhaar linking is bound to fail.

1) PAN-Aadhaar name mismatch:

Earlier, the UIDAI had a provision to allow linkage in case of minor mismatch of name but with effect from December 2017, that provision has been withdrawn. At that time, Aadhaar authentication was possible using an OTP-based verification if there was a minor change in the name of the cardholder.

For example, if your PAN card has "Kumar" but in Aadhaar card there is no middle name, then the linking will fail. Similarly, even if a single letter is different in the names, as mentioned in the two databases, then also any attempt to link PAN and Aadhaar will fail.

"In order to remove any chances of wrongful identity verification using demographic authentication, it is hereby decided to discontinue the provision of partial matching in demographic authentication," said a UIDAI circular.

The Income Tax department has asked PAN cardholders to ensure that the Aadhaar number and the name as per Aadhaar is exactly the same in PAN card.

2) Mismatch in the date of birth

If you entered the

wrong date of birth in either of the two documents, you are in for some trouble. Aadhaar cars won’t be linked to PAN card if there is a mismatch in your date of birth. In cases where the Aadhaar card contains only the year of birth then that should match the records in PAN card.

3) Gender mismatch:

In worst cases where gender is wrongly mentioned in either PAN or Aadhaar, the linking is bound to fail. "The I-T department will validate your name, date of birth and gender as per PAN with that of Aadhaar," the income tax e-filing portal says.

What to do in case of Aadhaar-PAN mismatch:

The only solution in data mismatch cases is to get it rectified. For example, if the spelling of your name in Aadhaar is wrong, then get it rectified from UIDAI. If there is any mistake in the PAN card, then get it rectified from either UTI or NSDL -- the two agencies responsible for issuing PAN cards. Once the rectification is done, you can again make an attempt to complete the linkage, this time successfully.