New Delhi, May 28 (IANS): In line with the announcement made in the Union Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday launched the facility for instant allotment of PAN on near to real-time basis.

A government statement said that the facility is now available for those PAN applicants who possess a valid Aadhaar number and have a mobile number registered with Aadhaar. The allotment process is paperless and an electronic PAN (e-PAN) is issued to the applicants free of cost.

Though the facility of instant PAN through Aadhaar based e-KYC has been launched formally now, its ‘Beta version' on trial basis was started on February 12, 2020 on the e-filing website of Income Tax Department. Since then, 6,77,680 instant PANs have been allotted with a turnaround time of about 10 minutes, till May 25, 2020.

As on May 25, a total of 50.52 crore PANs have been allotted to the taxpayers. Out of which, around 49.39 crore are allotted to the individuals and more than 32.17 crore are seeded with Aadhaar so far.

The process of applying for instant PAN is very simple. The instant PAN applicant is required to access the e-filing website of the Income Tax Department to provide her/his valid Aadhaar number and then submit the OTP received on her/his Aadhaar registered mobile number. On successful completion of this process, a 15-digit acknowledgment number is generated.

If required, the applicant can check the status of the request anytime by providing her/his valid Aadhaar number and on successful allotment, can download the e-PAN. The e-PAN is also sent to the applicant on her/his email ID, if it's registered with Aadhaar.

The launch of the instant PAN facility is yet another step by the Income Tax Department towards Digital India, thereby creating further ease of compliance for the taxpayers, the statement added.