Congress leader in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to extend the deadline by six months for linking PAN card with Aadhaar and remove the Rs 1000 fee.

He has mentioned the Department of Revenue notification which asked people to link their Aadhaar card with their PAN online against payment of Rs 1000 till March 31, 2023 or else their PAN will become inoperative.

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“I further request that a maximum number of Indians do live in extremely remote corners of the country where internet facilities are rarely available.

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“And unscrupulous touts have started extorting money as fees from these innocent citizens of rural India,” Chowdhury said and urged the Centre to direct post offices to assist the people free of cost.

He said that the situation was turning into a nightmare and would bring extreme misery to most people.

“In this regard, I earnestly request you to instruct the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue, to empower all Local and Sub Post Offices to help people to get their pan card linked with their Aadhaar card free of cost as well as extend the deadline till next six months,” the Congress leader said in his letter to the prime minister.

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The last day to link PAN with Aadhaar is March 31, 2023. According to the income tax department, failure to do so will lead to the unlinked PAN becoming inoperative.

The Aadhaar-PAN linking was free before March 31, 2022. A fee of Rs 500 was imposed from April 1, 2022 and was later increased to Rs 1,000 from July 1, 2022.