Biometric PAN cards: Is Mr. Chidambaram too ambitious ?

Biometric PAN cards will be arriving in India by year end!. Yes, thats what Mr. P Chidambaram told the news reporters today. When I read this news in Business Standard, I had mixed feelings. The two questions that came to my mind were,

Is it possible ? and will it serve any purpose ? 

I’d be happiest if both t he questions have positive answers, but I do have my doubts. Lets analyze -

What are BIOMETRIC PAN CARDS ?
In short, your unique body traits such as your fingerprints or your iris (retinal scan) will be used as your identification to carry out many of the activities such as tax filing, opening a bank account, carrying out registrations and hundreds of such other things.

Will Biometric Pan cards become a reality?
No- not at least in the near future !
I am not saying that they will not be implemented soon, but after implementation to actual utilization may take a long long time. Think about just one issue: Every Govt. office will need a gadget to identify the BIOMETRIC PAN cards- not only Government offices, but every banker and Institution where PAN card is required. The other issue is that a person will have to travel to offices everytime for his identification. One will not be able to post his application like he does now. Now thats a real pain. There are host of other problems that need to be tackled and thought about. Can these issues be overcome in matter of months ?  

I doubt.

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Author: Arun Prabhudesai

Arun Prabhudesai is founder / chief editor at trak.in. He jumped the Entrepreneurship bandwagon in early 2008 after a long 13 year stint in I.T Industry. You can follow him on twitter @trakin or get in touch with him at admin-at-trak-dot-in or 91.9822575676.

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