Goyal Calls For Single Identification Number For Businesses, Individuals By Merging Aadhaar, PAN And Other IDs

Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday (22 December) called for creation of a single identification number for businesses and individuals by merging the several identification numbers that exist at present such as Aadhaar, PAN and TAN for smoother and faster delivery of services.

Addressing the ‘National Workshop on the next phase of reforms to reduce Compliance Burden’, Goyal referred to multiple cards which a person needs to carry today and said, “Ideas like a single number are very logical. Right from Aadhaar, TAN, PAN and DIN number. We have so many numbers...Can we not bring in something like an American social security number which covers so many things?” reports Economic Times.

He said that more than 25,000 compliances have been reduced in the previous exercise implemented by the centre to promote Ease of Living and Ease of Doing Business.

Goyal highligted the need to combine various services like the Digi locker and National Single Window System so that repetitive processes are rationalized, gaps are bridged and redundancies are eliminated when it comes to applying for approvals and permissions

The minister opined that feedback from all stakeholders, especially users, had to be taken into account while designing compliance requirements and that ground realities must always be taken into consideration.

He urged policymakers to use crowdsourcing to find out details of the compliances that were proving to be cumbersome and work on rationalizing them.