What is Pan 2.0? Indian government aims to launch fully paperless and online unified system

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the Pan 2.0 project of the Income Tax Department of India with aims to create a fully paperless and online system in the country, according to the official press release on Monday, November 25. 

The government aims to bring a technology-driven transformation for taxpayers' registration services while giving certain benefits to the people. The benefits involve — Ease of access and speedy service delivery with improved quality, a single source of truth and data consistency, eco-friendly processes and cost optimization, and Security and optimization of infrastructure for greater agility, according to the release. 

The government is pledging ₹1,435 crore for the Pan 2.0 project.

“PAN card is part of our life which is important for the middle class and small business, it has been highly upgraded and PAN 2.0 has been approved today. The existing system will be upgraded and the digital backbone will be brought in a new way...,” said Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, discussing the details of the Pan 2.0 project on Monday. 

The government aims to enable the Pan 2.0 project under Digital India, which will make PAN eligible as a common identifier for all digital systems of specified government agencies. Vaishnaw also highlighted that the government aims to focus on the “grievance redressal system” aspect, which will cater to the queries and the needs of users. 

“It will be tried if it can become a common business identifier. There will be a unified portal, it will be completely paperless and online. The emphasis will be on the grievance redressal system,” said Vaishnaw, who discussed about the new Pan 2.0 project on Monday. 

Vaishnaw's presentation also showed that the current status of the PAN system is that a total of 78 crore PAN cards have been issued, 98 per cent of that has been to individuals.

The new system aims to upgrade the current PAN/TAN 1.0 eco-system, consolidating the core and non-core PAN/TAN activities and the PAN validation service, as per the official release.