NEW DELHI, June 11 - As many as 10.52 lakh �bogus� PAN cards of individual income tax assessees, which is around 0.4 per cent of the total such documents, cannot be termed a �minuscule� number to harm the country�s economy, the Supreme Court has said.
The apex court said that it has come on record that 11.35 lakh duplicate or fraudulent permanent account numbers have been detected and out of these, 10.52 lakh cases pertain to individual assesses. It made the observations in a 157-page judgement while upholding the validity of section 139AA of the Income Tax Act making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN cards and filing of tax returns.
�It was sought to be argued (by the petitioners) that persons found with duplicate/bogus PAN cards are hardly 0.4 per cent and, therefore, there was no need to have such a provision,� a bench headed by Justice AK Sikri said on Friday. �We cannot go by percentage figures. The absolute number of such cases is 10.52 lakh, which figure, by no means, can be termed as minuscule to harm the economy and create adverse effect on the nation,� the bench, also comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan, said. � PTI
