Government extends Aadhaar linking to March 31

New Delhi: The government on Wednesday extended the deadline to link Aadhaar and PAN to all bank accounts and several financial transactions by three months, till March 31, 2018.

“After considering various representations received and inputs received from banks, it has been decided to notify 31st March, 2018, or six months from the date of commencement of account based relationship by the client, whichever is later, as the date of submission of the Aadhaar number, and Permanent Account Number or Form 60 by the clients to the reporting entity,” the finance ministry said in a statement. As per rules, if existing account holders do not submit Aadhaar by March 31, 2018, their accounts will cease to be operational.

Earlier, the government had set December 31, 2017, as the deadline for providing Aadhaar to financial institutions, which meant that individuals were required to link their Aadhaar to bank accounts, credit cards, insurance policies, equity and mutual fund investments, loan from a bank, housing finance company, and small savings schemes like Public Provident Fund, Kisan Vikas Patra, National Savings Certificate and Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana among others. The government had also made quoting of Aadhaar mandatory for any financial transaction of `50,000 and above starting December 31.

The announcement to extend the deadline came a day before a five-judge constitutional bench of the Supreme Court starts hearing pleas seeking an interim stay on the Centre’s decision directing mandatory linking of Aadhaar with various government schemes and welfare measures.

As of November, 13.28 crore out of 33 crore PANs have been linked to the 12-digit biometric identifier Aadhaar.