Instant allotment facility of PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has launched the instant Permanent Account Number (PAN) facility which uses Aadhaar number based e-KYC. The beta facility was earlier launched in February 2020 on the income tax department’s e-filing website.

However, its Beta version on trial basis was started on 12th Feb 2020 on the e-filing website of Income Tax Department. Since then 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till 25th May 2020.

The launch was made in presence of Minister of State (MoS) for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Singh Thakur, Finance Secretary Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey and Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Pramod Chandra Mody.

It is a system under which PAN will be instantly allotted online for those who possess a valid Aadhaar number. The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost.

One needs to access the e-filing website of the Income Tax Department to provide her/his valid Aadhaar number and then submit the OTP received on her/his Aadhaar registered mobile number.

On successful completion of this process, a 15-digit acknowledgement number is generated and after allotment, one can download the e-PAN.

The e-PAN is also sent to the applicant on her/his email id if it is registered with Aadhaar.