The Kerala High Court on Friday allowed a petitioner to file Income Tax Returns manually without quoting the Aadhaar number or the Aadhaar enrolment ID, a press release by the Software Freedom Law Centre said. The court passed an interim order on a petition filed by Prasanth Sugathan, legal director of the SFLC, a legal services organisation.

Sugathan had filed a writ petition in the high court challenging the mandatory requirement to quote the Aadhaar number or enrollment ID for filing Income tax returns.

The petitioner had cited a Supreme Court verdict that the Permanent Account Numbers of those applicants without Aadhaar cannot be treated as invalid, to argue his case. He told the court that the partial stay granted by the apex court in the case against compulsory linking of PAN and Aadhaar would be futile, if assesses were forced to quote their Aadhaar number while filing I-T returns.