Okay if no Aadhaar for filing returns: SC

New Delhi : The Supreme Court today upheld the validity of a provision of the Income Tax Act that mandated linking of Aadhaar number with PAN for filing IT returns from July 1, saying Parliament was competent to enact such a law.
A Bench headed by Justice AK Sikri, however, read down a part of Section 139AA — added to the Income Tax Act by the Finance Act, 2017 — to save those who don’t have the unique identification number until the main challenge to the Aadhaar law on the basis of right to privacy was decided by a Constitution Bench.
Taking note of the concerns over leakage of individuals’ data, the top court asked the government to take measures to ensure there was no chance of data leakage by its officials or contractors.
“Those assessees who are not Aadhaar card holders and do not comply with the provision of Section 139(2), their PAN cards be not treated as invalid for the time being,” the Bench said while deciding a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Section 139AA of the Income Tax Act that made Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns and allotment of PAN.
Kerala CPI leader Binoy Viswam had contended that the Centre cannot “belittle” the apex court’s 2015 order holding the unique identification number as voluntary.
“A person who is a holder of PAN and if his PAN is invalidated, he is bound to suffer immensely in his day-to-day dealings, which situation should be avoided till the Constitution Bench authoritatively determines the argument of Article 21 of the Constitution,” the Bench said.