Serpentine queues in front of Aadhaar Suvidha Kendras in city

With July 31 deadline for filing IT returns and mandatory linking of PAN to Aadhar number, people are rushing to the 30 ASK centres set up in Hyderabad.
Serpentine queues in front of Aadhaar Suvidha Kendras in city

HYDERABAD: With just four more days to go for filing income tax returns, serpentine queues have become a common thing outside some of the Aadhaar Suvidha Kendras (ASK) in the city. Reason: The Centre has set July 31 deadline for filing IT returns after mandatory linking of Aadhaar with PAN.

At an ASK in Banjara Hills, as many as 400 persons have been lining up on a daily basis for the last couple of weeks. The number of people in some other centres has even increased two-folds while in most other centres it is a 50 per cent increase. “This week the number has increased to 100 a day when compared to last two weeks where the number was limited to less than 50 a day,” said Raju, an enrolment agency operator in Saroornagar.

“We are encouraging people to lodge complaints against any corruption at our agency,” said an executive at the ASK in Banjara Hills.

Take the case of R Ram, a resident of Banjara Hills, who could not enrol for Aadhaar earlier because of his frequent travelling. Since the government has made Aadhaar mandatory for all verification process now, he has come to the ASK to get enrolled.

“Because of my travel schedules I could not apply and now I am compelled to do so because of the compulsion,” he said. My token number is 303 and currently, 200 token number is going on. I am sure it would be evening by the time my turn comes,” he added.

Another person in the waiting area said that he has come all the way from Moosapet at 9.30 am but his turn came only at 4 pm.

Meanwhile, when contacted, an officer from the Unique Identification Authority of India’s Regional office in Hyderabad said that the increase in numbers was expected. “We have been telling people to link their Aadhaar numbers with PAN since six months and if they haven’t done it, it is not our problem,” said an officer who refused to reveal his identity.

Interestingly, there are 30 ASKs that are currently functioning in Hyderabad but people are opting to go to only those centres that have gained prominence for being corruption-free. “The problem is people do not know that there are so many centres across various places in the city. When I first went to Karvy at Banjara Hills, it was crowded. But, when I checked for other centres it was not that crowded,” said Ramesh, a resident.

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