Now You Have To Verify Your PAN Details For Opening Small Saving Scheme Accounts

The Department of Posts (DoP) under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications, Govt of India has unveiled in a circular issued on 25th January 2022 that at present, in Finacle CBS (Core Banking Solution) System, the Permanent account number (PAN) card of the depositors are updated as part of Know your customer (KYC) compliance. The PAN Card entered in the system is validated only based on the standard PAN format i.e. 10 alphanumeric characters. But the correctness of the PAN card numbers provided by the depositors or the PAN entered by the Post Office officials are not validated with National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) currently.

Sometimes PAN numbers are not recognized in Income Tax returns during the filing of TDS returns because they are inaccurate or incorrect. Regarding the same, the DoP has also clarified that "During the filing of TDS returns, many of the PAN numbers are not accepted in Income Tax statements due to invalid/wrong PAN, which leads to complaints from Depositors regarding non-availability of TDS deducted details in Form 26,4'5 of the Depositors. In order to settle these complaints, the DDOs are required to file correction TDS statements which unnecessarily put the DDOs and Depositors in trouble."

The department has further said in the circular that "Further, as per Rule 6 of Govt. Savings Promotion General Rules 2018 (GSPR 2018), w.e.f. L8.L2.2019, for the opening of any account in Post Of6ce, submission of either PAN Number or Form - 60 is mandatory and if Form - 60 is submitted by the customer, PAN Number is to be submitted by the Depositor without fail, within the next six months. If a depositor who has already opened an account prior to the date of notification (GSPR 2018) and has not already submitted his Permanent Account Number, the depositor shall do so within a period of six months from the date of notification (GSPR 2018) and in the event of the failure of the depositor to submit the Permanent Account Number within the specified period of six months, his account shall cease to be operational till the time the depositor submits the PAN Number."

The Department of Posts (DoP) has made further clarification that "Hence, it has been decided to restrict the account opening without entering either PAN or Form - 60 details and validate the correctness of the PAN number entered by availing the facility of online verification of PAN Numbers being provided by NSDL. Accordingly, Finacle CBS System is integrated with NSDL System. Patches have been deployed in CBS Finacle System to validate the PAN entered at the time of creation and modification of CIFs of the Customers / Depositors and when any cash transaction exceeds Rs. 50,000/- is carried out. Checking and validation of the PAN by the Post Office officials have to be done with care to avoid mistakes: Details of the PO users validating the PAN are captured in audit trials."