Indian expats in UAE required to link Aadhaar, PAN cards by end of 2019

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

The Indian Government announced the requirement of NRI’s (non-resident Indian’s) to get their PAN cards and Aadhaar cards or the Unique Identification card linked by Tuesday in order to avoid banking services disruption.

Intially the central government announced that an NRI (non-resident Indian) was not required to have an Aadhaar card or PAN card number.

The governmental public notice, which was issued last week, mentioned the need for NRI’s to get the documents linked before the end of 2019.

NRI’s and others who possess Aadhar and PAN, can link them through the government income tax department’s website: https://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/home

The Indian expats who own financial dealings back home would also need to link them.

The linking of the documents was to be made compulsory in the year 2017, but the deadline required to get it done has been revised several times since then.

This time the deadline that was September 30, 2019, has been revised to December 31, 2019.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has announced a milestone of sorts with the total number of Aadhaar cards issued so far crossing the 1.25 billion mark. With this, 1.25 billion residents of the country have received their own 12-digit unique identity number since the service was rolled out in 2009, the government said on Friday.

A man receives money from post office upon showing his Aadhaar card. File/ AFP

Over the years, the Aadhaar card has evolved as a primary identification document for a number of purposes in India. The Aadhaar-based authentication services have been used almost 37,000 crore times since inception. As per UIDAI records, about three crore authentication requests are received on an average everyday.

It has also been observed that people are updating their Aadhaar details.

UIDAI has recorded about 331 crore successful Aadhaar updates (biometric and demographic) till date. At present UIDAI receives about 3-4 lakh Aadhaar update requests every day, the government said.

The Aadhaar, with a unique identity number, was introduced in 2009. It is the world's largest biometric identification system.