Kerala High Court: In the writ petition filed by Prasanth Sugathan, legal director of the SFLC, the Court passed an interim order allowing the petitioner to file his Income Tax Return manually without quoting the Aadhaar number.
The petitioner had challenged the mandatory requirement to quote Aadhaar number or enrollment ID for filing Income tax returns as per Section 139AA of the amended Income Tax Act, 1961. He had argued that the partial stay granted by the Supreme Court in Binoy Viswam v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 647, in compulsory linking of PAN and Aadhaar would be futile if assesses were forced to quote their Aadhaar number while filing IT returns.
On 09.06.2017, the bench of Dr. A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, JJ had in Binoy Viswam v. Union of India, 2017 SCC OnLine SC 647, upheld the validity of Section 139AA of Income Tax Act, 1961 that makes the linking of Aadhaar Card to the Permanent Account Number (PAN) mandatory and said that the provision is neither discriminatory nor it offends equality clause enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution. As per the order of the Court, those who have already enrolled themselves under Aadhaar scheme would comply with the requirement of sub-section (2) of Section 139AA of the Act. Those who still want to enrol are free to do so. However, 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.
Source: CNN-News18