Government to issue biometric PAN card

The government has decided to issue biometric PAN cards to taxpayers across the country to weed out the problem of duplicate and fake ones. The decision comes in the wake of a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that asked the Income Tax department to ensure that a single tax payer is not issued multiple cards. The proposed new biometric Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards will bear the I-T assessee’s fingerprints (two from each hand) and the face. Biometric cards are not likely to become mandatory, a senior official in the I-T department said.While PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the I-T department to taxpayers, biometrics uses biological method to identify physical features of an individual.