New Delhi: The government has deleted or deactivated 11.4 lakh income tax permanent account numbers (PAN) to weed out duplication. 

Under the law, an individual can have only one PAN and the government has over the years sought to weed out duplicate PANs but has found itself wanting. As a result, it has opted to link PAN with Aadhaar, a move that triggered controversy, too.

"Linkage of Aadhaar number into PAN database will allow a robust way of de-duplication as Aadhaar number is based on biometric attributes of fingerprints and iris images. Further, seeding of Aadhaar will allow the income tax department to weed out any undetected duplicate PANs.

It will also facilitate resolution of cases of one PAN allotted to multiple persons," minister of state for finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar told Parliament, while disclosing the number of PANs that have been deactivated.

The minister also said that 1,566 PANs have been identified as "fake", which were allotted to either non-existent person or in the names of persons with false identities.

During 2004 to 2007, the government had undertaken an exercise to do away with duplicate PANs.

The department has launched a facility to check if one`s PAN is valid or not, for which one needs to visit the income tax e-filing website (incometaxindiaefiling.gov. in) and choose the services tab and then go to 'know your PAN'.

Then, one needs to fill up the required information to know the status based on a one-time password that will be sent to his or her registered mobile.