Instant PAN facility through Aadhaar based e-KYC launched! Another digital breakthrough by Modi government

In the Union Budget, 2020, FM Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government will launch instant PAN. And, in line with the announcement made, Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman formally launched the facility for instant allotment of PAN (on near to real time basis) in New Delhi on Thursday. 

The facility of instant PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC has been launched formally today, however, its ‘Beta version’ on trial basis was started on 12th Feb 2020 on the e-filing website of Income Tax Department. Since then onwards, 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till 25th May 2020.

This facility is now available for those PAN applicants who possess a valid Aadhaar number and have a mobile number registered with Aadhaar. The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost.

The launch of the Instant PAN facility is yet another step by the Income Tax Department towards Digital India, thereby creating further ease of compliance to the taxpayers.

As on 25.05.2020, a total of 50.52 crore PANs have been allotted to the taxpayers, out of which, around 49.39 crore are allotted to the individuals and more than 32.17crore are seeded with Aadhaar so far.