The Central government has embarked on an ambitious plan to link Aadhaar numbers with PAN (Permanent Account Number), but the programme is facing teething trouble with even former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha being unable to link the two identities.

Sinha told The Statesman: "When I tried to link the two, I discovered that the name in my PAN card is written as 'Yashwant Sinha' and in Aaadhar card it is written as 'Shri Yashwant Sinha'. So, the matching could not take place."

Sinha, who use to head the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, said for the last couple of months he has been trying to tell Aadhaar personnel in Hazaribagh, his home town, where the card was made, to change it to Yashwant Sinha.

"Now, they have come to me twice to take my finger prints to match with earlier finger prints taken when I was younger. Now in the last two attempts, they have not matched. So, I am in a quandary. You see, the lines on your fingers change with age. So, they say it is capturing only 20 per cent, not 50 per cent which is the minimum requirement. I am desperately trying to get the name on the Aadhaar card changed but it's not happening. I will try again, when I go back to Hazaribagh," Sinha added.

The former minister said, "Such problems will arise. People who work with their hands, labourers, their lines and fingers will keep changing. The solution here is to find other ways of tallying like eyes."

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley through an amendment to tax proposals in the Finance Bill for 2017-18 had made Aadhaar mandatory for filing income tax returns and provided for linking of PAN with Aadhaar to check tax evasion through use of multiple PAN cards.

According to available data, as many as 2.07 crore taxpayers have already linked their Aadhaar cards with their PAN. There are over 25 crore PAN card-holders in the country while Aadhaar has been issued to 115 crore people. While Aadhaar is a biometric authentication issued by the UIDAI, PAN is a 10-digit alphanumeric number allotted by the I-T department to individuals and entities.