The Supreme Court today upheld the validity of the law making Aadhaar mandatory for allotment of PAN and filing of Income Tax(IT) returns but exempted those without it for now until the larger privacy issue is decided.<br/><br/>In effect, those who possess an Aadhaar card must link it to their Permanent Account Number(PAN) card and those who have enrolled and not yet got their Aadhaar card are also exempted from mandatory linkage and the penalising invalidation of their PANs if they don't link it.<br/><br/>The apex court while upholding the validity of a fresh provision in the Income Tax (IT) law making Aadhaar compulsory for allotment of PAN and filing of IT returns imposed a partial stay on it till its constitution bench decides the right to privacy issue connected with it.<br/><br/>A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan, which upheld the legislative competence of the Parliament in enacting the law to this effect, said there was no conflict between the impugned provision of the Income Tax Act and the Aadhaar Act. It said that PAN card without Aadhaar number would not be treated invalid till the Constitution bench decides the larger issue of Right to Privacy.<br/><br/>The bench said that previous transactions won't be affected or nullified with partial stay on the new law till privacy issue linked to Aadhaar is decided.The bench also asked the government to take appropriate steps to ensure there was no leakage of data from the Aadhaar scheme as apprehensions have been expressed that there was a possibility of the data being compromised.