166 mn PAN, 877 mn bank accounts linked to Aadhaar: Govt informs Parliament

Over 166.5 million PAN cards and 877.9 million bank accounts have been linked to biometric identifier Aadhaar, Parliament was informed on Friday.

"As on March 5, number of Aadhaar cards linked with PAN is 16,65,82,421. Further, as on March 2, 877.9 million current accounts and savings accounts have been linked with Aadhaar," Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

He said Aadhaar linked financial transactions pass through multi-entity model such as bank, NPCI and UIDAI.

As on March 2, total of 6,811 Aadhaar enrolment or updation centres is operational in bank branches.

Sharing of information or seeding of Aadhaar information with the authorised agencies is governed by the Aadhaar Act. Additionally, the Act also lays down monetary penalties and imprisonment for unauthorised sharing of residents' identity information.

"Any violation to the provision of The Aadhaar Act is a criminal offence," he said.

The government has mandated submission of the 12-digit unique identity number Aadhaar by every bank account holder by March 31, 2018 to weed out unaccounted wealth.

For the same purpose, Aadhaar linking with income-tax permanent account number or PAN has also been made mandatory.