In September last year, the Supreme Court held the constitutional validity of the Centre's Aadhaar scheme. The apex court has also mandated the filing of income tax return (ITR) with Aadhaar and the deadline to link PAN with Aadhaar ends on March 31.

By linking with Aadhaar, we will know whether there are any duplicate PAN or not. And there are certain duplicate PANs... If it is not linked, we may cancel the PAN also," said CBDT Chairman Sushil Chandra.

Sushil Chandra said that out of the total 42 crore PAN cards that have been issued by the Income Tax Department, just 23 crore individuals with PAN have so far linked their PAN with biometric ID Aadhaar, even as the last date to link the two IDs is March 31, 2019.

After Aadhaar is linked to PAN and a bank account is linked to the PAN, the department of income tax will be able to extract crucial information concerning the assessee such as the spending pattern along with other details.

GoodReturns.in