Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a Congress Lok Sabha member, wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, urging him to extend the deadline for linking PAN cards with Aadhaar by six months and waive the Rs 1000 charge.
He referred to a Department of Revenue notification in which persons were requested to link their Aadhaar card to their PAN online for a fee of Rs 1000 before March 31, 2023, or their PAN will become inoperative.
“I also propose that a maximum number of Indians do live in really rural regions of the country where internet facilities are rarely available.
“And unscrupulous touts have begun extorting money as fees from these innocent folks of rural India,” Chowdhury said, urging the Centre to direct post offices to provide free assistance to the people.
He claimed that the situation was deteriorating into a nightmare that would cause widespread sorrow.
“In this regard, I humbly request you to instruct the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue, to empower all Local and Sub Post Offices to assist people in getting their pan card linked with their Aadhaar card free of cost, as well as to extend the deadline until the next six months,” the Congress leader wrote to the prime minister.
The deadline for linking PAN to Aadhaar is March 31, 2023. According to the income tax authorities, failure to do so will result in the unlinked PAN being inoperative.
Before March 31, 2022, the Aadhaar-PAN linkage was free. From April 1, 2022, a tax of Rs 500 was levied, which was later increased to Rs 1,000 on July 1, 2022.
