The Income Tax department has said that multiple PAN card holders will have to surrender their cards by December 31, 06. In other words, no one should posses more than one PAN after this deadline. There are close to 17 lakh cases of multiple holding of PAN cards across the country.

We have undertaken a drive to eliminate this multiplicity, Dilip Kumar Das, chief commissioner, Income Tax, Kolkata, said on the sidelines of a seminar, organised by Calcutta Chamber of Commerce.

Mr Das said that incidents of such multiplicity is significantly less in Kolkata when compared to cities like Mumbai or Delhi. Here, we have issued close to 36 lakh PAN cards, of which some 1,08,000 cards have been issued by the department to persons already possessing a card, Mr Das said.